Guardant Health is a leading precision oncology company focused on helping conquer cancer globally through use of its proprietary blood tests, vast data sets and advanced analytics. The Guardant Health Oncology Platform leverages capabilities to drive commercial adoption, improve patient clinical outcomes and lower healthcare costs across all stages of the cancer care continuum. Guardant Health has launched liquid biopsy-based Guardant360®, Guardant360 CDx and GuardantOMNI® tests for advanced stage cancer patients. These tests fuel development of its LUNAR program, which aims to address the needs of early stage cancer patients with neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment selection, cancer survivors with surveillance, asymptomatic individuals eligible for cancer screening and individuals at a higher risk for developing cancer with early detection.

In this role, you’ll be responsible for developing, implementing, and scaling complex automated workflows within a regulated state-of-the-art next-generation sequencing lab. 

The Senior Automation / Process Engineer will be directly responsible for leading or contributing to all aspects of assay/ reagent manufacturing automation development from concept, requirements definition, and manual assay development to adaptation, optimization, troubleshooting and validation.  Will leverage an understanding of molecular biology and biochemistry to troubleshoot analytical and preparation processes. Apply scientific methods and engineering skills to improve the scalability of Guardant Health’s sample processing workflows.

As a Senior Automation / Process Engineer, you must be collaborative and able to effectively participate in or lead cross functional teams working in a variety of projects.  These cross functional teams will explore, develop, optimize, test, and implement robust, scalable solutions for Guardant Health’s sample processing workflows with attention to understanding business and user requirements and improving efficiency, throughput, and quality. You will also contribute to protocol generation, report writing and presentation preparation.   

Essential Duties and Responsibilities: 

• Sustaining and support the release products
• Lead or contribute to development of new assay processes, reagent manufacturing processes and technologies along with innovation in current workflows.
• Lead or contribute to the design, development, optimization, and implementation of automated liquid handling processes, systems, and streamlined workflows.
• Collaborate closely with other development, operation, and quality & regulatory teams to enable the development and implementation of new workflows.
• Analyze workflows, identify bottlenecks, and develop solutions to improve efficiency, throughput, cost, and quality.
• Program robotic liquid handling workstations and integrated robotic systems.

Qualifications:

You’re a Scientist or Engineer with a proven track record of automating and scaling and you’re eager to participate in the development of a high growth, fast paced startup. 

Come with an interdisciplinary background in molecular biology, lab automation and programming is required. 

Prior, demonstrated experience designing, developing, testing, implementing, and supporting automated sample-processing workflows using a requirements-driven approach in a clinical laboratory or other molecular biology-based laboratory setting. 

Be able to leverage an understanding of molecular biology and biochemistry to troubleshoot analytical and preparative processes. 

The successful candidate will apply scientific methods and engineering skills to improve the scalability of Guardant Health’s sample processing workflows.

You also have:  BS degree in engineering or science, preferably in molecular biology, genetics or biochemistry, bioengineering, chemical engineering or a closely-related discipline and 5-8 years of related experience.  MS with 6+ years of related work experience or a PhD with 3+ years of related work experience will also be considered.

• Experience in streamlining workflows and developing automated laboratory processes and instrumentation systems, from concept generation and requirement gathering through to process validation and implementation.
• Hands-on experience with operating and programming Hamilton Liquid handling robotics platforms. 
• Experience with automated development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) assays and/or standard molecular biology techniques such as nucleic acid isolation and purification, DNA quantitation, PCR, etc.
• Experience working within regulated environments (IVD, LDT, etc.) is a plus.
• Strong communication and collaborative skills, working with internal and external colleagues and customers from diverse scientific, engineering, operational, and regulatory disciplines.
• Experience with statistical data analysis, monitoring data quality, and troubleshooting technical problems.

Covid Vaccination Policy:  Starting January 7, 2022, Guardant Health will require all employees to be fully vaccinated to either (a) establish that they have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19; or (b) request and obtain an approved exemption from Guardant’s COVID-19 U.S. Vaccination Policy as a reasonable accommodation, as consistent with applicable laws.  An employee is considered fully vaccinated against COVID-19 two weeks after receiving the second dose of a two-dose vaccine or one dose of a single-dose vaccination. Acceptable vaccines are approved or under emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and/or the World Health Organization (WHO). In addition, fully-vaccinated employees will be required to maintain their fully-vaccinated status under this policy by obtaining, if applicable, any FDA-approved boosters.

Employee may be required to lift routine office supplies and use office equipment. Majority of the work is performed in a desk/office environment; however, there may be exposure to high noise levels, fumes, and biohazard material in the laboratory environment. Ability to sit for extended periods of time.

Guardant Health is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

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Please visit our career page at: http://www.guardanthealth.com/jobs/

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