Job Description

A Bit About Us

We are Arcadia Science, an evolutionary biology company founded and led by scientists. Our mission is to turn natural innovations into real-world solutions by developing systematic and quantitative approaches to leveraging biology for therapeutics R&D. We share our research as openly as possible to accelerate discovery and make our work broadly useful.

The Opportunity

We're hiring the first Product Engineer for the Foundry, a division at Arcadia that reports directly to the CEO. The Foundry sits at the interface between R&D and commercial deployment, taking validated tools and new capabilities from the research team and productionizing them for broader use. The first users are internal researchers, who will inform development for future use by external partners.

The Foundry's first focus is Raman spectroscopy, where we have developed meaningful capabilities that need to be professionalized: making the hardware production-ready, designing and building user-friendly operating and analysis software, and delivering a setup intuitive enough for any researcher in the organization to use without much friction. From there, you will help define what external deployment looks like, working with partners who want access to these capabilities inside their own labs and companies.

The position is full-time and on-site at our Emeryville, California headquarters.

What You'll Do

In the near term

• Assess Arcadia's current Raman spectroscopy capabilities and define a roadmap for productionizing the hardware and software setup.
• Work closely with the technical team to understand the underlying technology and what needs to change for a product context.
• Get familiar with sample preparation and assay challenges associated with Raman use.
• Conduct user interviews and observational research with users to understand workflow needs and pain points, translating findings directly into design and development priorities.
• Build and iterate on an internal deployment accessible to researchers without specialized instrumentation backgrounds.
• Establish feedback loops with internal users to continuously improve the experience.

Further out

• Help build a small product-focused team around this capability.
• Own the end-to-end product design process for new capabilities, from user research and interface design through to deployment and iteration.
• Define and execute external deployment, including how Arcadia's Raman capabilities can be integrated in partner labs and companies.
• Troubleshoot sample preparation and help develop critical Raman-based assays for external partners.
• Help shape the operating and financial model of the Foundry as it grows.

Required

• PhD or equivalent depth in a relevant field such as electrical engineering, optical engineering, physics, bioengineering, or similar.
• 2+ years of industry experience developing and scaling hardware or instrumentation.
• Experience managing a small technical team.
• Experience in product development and design.
• Demonstrated ability to take something from prototype to a robust, usable state, with attention to the full user experience.
• Hands-on experience with some combination of optical systems, spectroscopy, instrument software, lab automation, and mechanical design.

Preferred

• Hands-on experience with Raman spectroscopy.
• Experience building data processing and ML pipelines for spectral or image analysis.
• Hands-on experience in biological or biochemical assays.
• Experience navigating user or customer relationships in a technical context.
• Experience with product development, i.e. user-centered design, market research, customer outreach, etc.
• Experience developing open source designs and protocols.

Our Ideal Candidate

The ideal candidate has a founder's instinct and an engineer's rigor, and measures their success by how useful what they build is to the people using it. They are comfortable operating with significant autonomy in an environment where the path isn't fully defined, and can move fluidly between deep technical problem-solving and the practical realities of deployment and user needs. They are energized by being close to the customer, treat user feedback as an essential signal, and are motivated by building something that works reliably in the real world, not just in a research setting. For the right person who builds something exceptional, there may be a future opportunity to develop this into an independent spin-out entity, with Arcadia as a founding partner.

Compensation

$175k–$215k depending on experience, with benefits and a competitive equity offering. This position requires full-time, on-site work at our Emeryville, California headquarters.

Arcadia Science is an equal-opportunity workplace. We welcome people from all backgrounds and communities.

Application Process

Please submit a resume and fully answer all application questions, addressing your interest in and qualifications for the position. Promising candidates will be invited for virtual and on-site interviews, as well as a short technical work test. Employment offers are contingent on reference and background checks.