Project/ R+D Operations Lead

Us

We are a microbiome science company pioneering innovations in probiotics and living medicines to impact human and planetary health. Founded to realize the potential of microbes, our platform enables the translation of breakthrough science across a portfolio encompassing both indication-specific and preventive applications for gastrointestinal and digestive health, women’s health, skin and oral care, pediatrics, mental health, metabolic function and nutrition. Our consumer innovations are commercialized under Seed® with a mission to bring much-needed precision, efficacy, education, and perspective-shifting science communication to the global category of probiotics. Environmental research is conducted under SeedLabs, which was founded to develop novel bacterial interventions to enhance biodiversity and restore ecosystems impacted by human activity. We co-founded LUCA Biologics with Dr. Jacques Ravel to develop living medicines targeting the vaginal microbiome for urogenital and reproductive health. 

We are a global ecosystem of scientists and partners across Europe and Australia. We speak fluent science and believe microbes offer a new lens to understand our bodies, our health, and our planet.  Our team and Scientific Board include both top scientists and doctors from leading academic institutions as well as experienced marketers, brand builders and storytellers. 

In less than 4 years in DTC, we’ve built a flagship probiotic that rivals the legacy top two omni-channel brands in all of probiotics globally. We have also built an extraordinary pipeline across multiple categories and needs with breakthrough microbiome science. And now we need the human who is going to thoughtfully architect our member experience and product roadmap as we scale. 

Here is a summary of our Seed DNA and the codification of How We Work.

About You 

If you pride yourself on translating abstraction into order, are a meticulous information-gatherer, and a resourceful problem-solver who believes no task is too small — this is for you. You understand how hundreds of small moving parts contribute to the overall success of a program and team function. You are eager to dive into the action to maintain momentum and you can multitask like it’s your middle name. You keep the pace when pivots, curveballs, or blockers arise across projects, contracts, scheduling, brief creation, and team operations. You are a brilliant communicator who inspires others to set a new standard. 

You promote a culture obsessed with process and diligence– from every email, deck, reminder, and follow-up. Without you, critical meetings wouldn’t get on the calendar, projects wouldn’t move forward, and KPIs would get off track. You are insatiably curious, kind, and empathic, with an unrivaled work ethic. You are excited at the prospect of diving into something totally new and with your foundational skills, you’ve come to understand that you don’t necessarily need to know… you just need to know how to find out. And once you do find out, you innovate past it. You can sit at the table with bioinformaticians, lead scientists, laboratory vendors, clinical consultants, and project managers. 

You’re eager to understand how cross-functional teams lock in together and are well-versed in the day-to-day function of a laboratory, R+D department, clinical study, or academic collaboration. Your past experience, whether it be in a start-up space, research lab, clinical operations, or business team means you deliver your tasks, are persistent in follow-ups, strategize schedules and priorities, and are a systems thinker with a “first principles” ethos. You’re thrilled at the prospect of tapping into the microbiome matrix, and supporting the teams that turn dreams into real-world solutions. 

You are buoyed by mountains of emails, slacks, texts, asana tasks, google doc tags; you see the matrix in backlogs of scheduling requests, digital paperwork, and budget tracking, and understand the growth opportunity to be had in being immersed in the minutiae. “Closing the loop” is an obsession of yours from incomplete tasks or projects gone by the wayside. You consider timing, audience, and a host of other variables and context before you reach out. While you always act quickly, you also don’t act in haste; triple-checking, critical thinking, and contextual analysis are your prized skills. 

Who you are:

• BA/BS/MS with additional related experience
• 1-3 years of experience, ideally in start-up industry
• Extreme attention to detail, organization, and agility in juggling team function and cross-company tasks
• Exceptional writer and meticulous communicator 
• Keen listener and recorder of instructions and details in fast-paced environment and ability to process and act on instructions quickly; fastidious follow-upper
• Exceptional common sense prioritization and strategic thinking, results oriented + entrepreneurial mindset
• Committed to education and deepening self-learning and understanding of Seed, our products, and the science and knowledge that empowers our health

What you’ll do:

• Manage an array of workflows integral to R+D team’s efficiency, including scheduling and calendaring, generating correspondence and follow-ups, deck outlines/research, creating and tracking spreadsheets, and templates from project briefs to literature reviews
• Develop and track spend against program budgets
• Lead excellent communication, follow-ups, and next steps with collaborators, contractors, R+D team, lab vendors, legal partners and beyond
• Initiate and track contract and SOW progress with legal and external parties
• Support our scientific team to organize and execute project brief inputs to frame the goals, details, and trajectory of a project
• Track project progress, timelines, risks, and wins across our Discovery Pipeline 
• Managing invoices to vendors and interact with finance to ensure vendors are aligned in internal tracking system
• Manage inventories, processing, and biobanking of our clinical trial samples in the Benchling system
• Documentation of our experimental and bioinformatic workflows, including documentation of data generated by collaborators
• Work with the R+D Team Project Lead and Senior Scientists to keep pipelines moving 
• Coordinate document filing, signatures, and optimize R+D team files and data storage 
• Work closely with the R+D Project Manager to track all project components in Asana and communicate upcoming deadlines, blockers, and solutions to the team