Job area: Research & Development
Activity: Custom drying food ingredients
Location: Marcq-en-Barœul, France
Contract type: Permanent Contract
Experience: 3 to 5 years

Contribute to an exciting mission
What will your daily life look like?

Design large-scale microbial synthetic and systems biology experiments leveraging the full capabilities of the Lesaffre Biofoundry (numerous and highly integrated robots for high-throughput molecular biology, strain construction and strain characterization; high-throughput NGS sequencing ; and other capabilities) in order to accelerate DBTL cycles for a variety of industrial biotechnology applications
Together with other members of the Lesaffre Biofoundry, oversee the successful execution of these experiments. Participate in troubleshooting and propose solutions to resolve identified problems
Oversee the consolidation and analysis of all the data generated by these experiments, working with the bioinformaticians and data engineers from the Lesaffre Data Science team when relevant. Develop strategies to automate the design of future experiments based on all currently available data
Maintain world-leading knowledge in the field of microbial synthetic and systems biology. Detect opportunities to improve the efficiency and reliability of existing workflows or to develop new ones. More specifically, establish the combined use of large-scale DNA barcoded strain libraries (pooled or arrayed) with high-content, system-level data (such as transcriptome trajectories) as a powerful, generic tool that can be applied across the Lesaffre R&D project portfolio
Maintain high-quality documentation of your work and discoveries, in the forms of written reports, technical presentations, electronic lab notebooks, internal database records, code comments, and software documentation

Make a personal impact
That makes you the ideal candidate

PhD or equivalent experience in genetics, genomics, synthetic biology, biochemistry, chemical engineering, bioengineering, or another related field. Interdisciplinary work is strongly encouraged
At least 4 years of experience in designing large-scale experiments leveraging DNA barcoding and multiplexed sequencing for applications in microbial synthetic biology or systems biology
Expertise in analyzing the results of such experiments using existing or custom-made computational pipelines
Proficiency in developing custom computational pipelines for a broad range of applications, preferably using Python and its open-source software ecosystem for biological applications (Biopython, the synthetic biology tool suite from the Edinburgh Genome Foundry…)
Expertise in programmatic data retrieval and treatment from public databases (UniProt, Brenda, KEGG…) as well as from internal databases (custom-built SQL databases, LIMS…)
Software engineering skills are a big plus
Expertise in the design of RNA-seq workflows (including library preparation and data analysis) is a big plus
Experience in leveraging lab automation equipment (liquid handling, thermocycling, colony picking, incubators, cytometers…) at the level of experiment design is a big plus
Ability to work in an international team, including good command of spoken and written English, cultural sensitivity, flexibility

Let’s take on tomorrow’s challenges together

A key global player in fermentation for more than a century, Lesaffre, with a 2,2 billion euro turnover, and established on all continents, counts 10,700 employees and more than 85 nationalities. On the strength of this experience and diversity, we work with customers, partners and researchers to find ever more relevant answers to the needs of food, health, naturalness and respect for our environment. Thus, every day, we explore and reveal the infinite potential of microorganisms.

To nourish 10 billion people, in a healthy way, in 2050 by making the most of our planet’s resources is a major and unprecedented issue. We believe that fermentation is one of the most promising answers to this challenge.

About the Biofoundry. Lesaffre is establishing the first industrial biofoundry in France. It is gathering an international team of motivated, risk-taking scientists and engineers to merge biology, engineering, automation and computer science to improve organism engineering, screening and selection for a wide portfolio of industrial biotechnology applications (baking, brewing, biotehanol, flavors and fragrances, food and feed, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals)