Research Scientist, Protein Design & Engineering

Dayhoff Labs • Cambridge, MA

14h

About The Position

You'll engineer proteins to carry out useful chemistry, combining enzyme discovery, directed evolution, and experimental characterisation. You'll own the experimental cycle: choosing starting points, building variant libraries, developing screens, and establishing which changes improve function and why. This is a hands-on role working closely with computational and ML teams. You'll test designed proteins at the bench, use experimental results to guide subsequent rounds, and develop enzymes with the activity, selectivity, and stability needed for their intended application. There’s no fixed screening pipeline to inherit — you'll help decide how to build it.

Requirements

• A track record of improving protein or enzyme function through directed evolution or rational engineering.
• Practical fluency in molecular biology, including cloning, library construction, mutagenesis, and recombinant protein expression.
• Experience developing and troubleshooting enzyme assays and screening workflows, with appropriate controls and follow-up validation.
• A solid grasp of enzyme mechanism, kinetics, and structure–function relationships, and the ability to use these to guide experiments.
• Experience independently taking projects through multiple design–build–test cycles and explaining what drove the results.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with industrial biocatalysis or engineering enzymes for demanding reaction conditions.
• Experience integrating liquid handling and laboratory automation with high-throughput screening.
• Familiarity with biosensor-based screens, growth-based selection, or FACS.
• Experience testing computationally designed proteins and feeding experimental results back into design.
• Experience with enzyme cascades, fermentation, or transferring enzymatic processes from the bench to larger scales.

Responsibilities

• Design and run protein engineering campaigns, from initial enzyme selection and library design through screening and characterisation of improved variants.
• Build and express variant libraries using site-directed, random, and combinatorial mutagenesis.
• Develop assays and high-throughput screens that reliably measure the properties being targeted for improvement.
• Express, purify, and characterise proteins, measuring kinetics, substrate scope, selectivity, and stability under relevant reaction conditions.
• Work with computational scientists to test proposed designs, interpret successes and failures, and use results to guide subsequent rounds.
• Develop enzymatic reactions and cascades, identifying how enzyme performance, cofactors, and reaction conditions affect overall productivity.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed