Principal Scientist, Protein Engineering

About Alta

Alta Resource Technologies (Alta) is a next generation mining company that uses synthetic biology to separate critical minerals from conventional and unconventional resources, including e-waste. Founded in 2023, the company is expanding its team in Boulder, CO. The exponential growth of new tech industries, as well as the information technology sector, are driving historic growth in mineral demand and stressing existing supply streams.

Meeting new demand, diversifying the supply chain, and producing minerals in a more sustainable manner requires the rapid development, deployment and scaling of new technologies. This mineral challenge represents a historic opportunity for technology development and value creation. Alta is proud to be at the vanguard of this mega trend.

The Principal Scientist
in Protein Engineering will oversee the scientific process optimizations for the directed evolution of metalloprotein variants, including implementing state-of-the-art approaches to protein design, expression, and testing of proteins for continuous improvement. The role will execute at the bench to develop workflows for protein design, cloning, expression, and assays to enhance protein production, purification, and downstream applications. The candidate will have experience in agile process workflows to implement directed evolution campaigns that will yield proteins with novel characteristics.

The candidate will develop robust protocols for transfer within internal and external groups. The individual will join a group of collaborative scientists with diverse skill sets and must have strong communication and critical thinking skills with a rigorous approach to science.

• Establish construct design and cloning workflows that enable high-throughput and multiplexed approaches for protein variant testing and selections.
• Develop high-throughput variant libraries for improving strain and protein performance including optimizing for protein production, affinity, specificity, and stability.
• Develop and implement automation and experimental strategies to support high-throughput and library-scale directed evolution campaigns.
• Collaborate with the team to develop end-to-end processes designed for workflow efficiency.

• Apply data analysis from directed evolution campaigns to inform scale-up production of lead protein candidates.
• Design and implement protein production improvements to achieve round-over-round improvement.

• Ensure excellent practices in documentation of all protocols and experiments.
• Effectively communicate results with stakeholders across the company.
• Develop talent through team building and project execution.

• Ph.D. in biochemistry, molecular biology, or related field with 10+ years of industry experience.
• Expertise in high-throughput molecular biology approaches and library-scale workflows.
• Expertise in protein engineering, including novel protein design, scalable microtiter production and assays, informed data interpretation for protein candidate selections.
• Expertise in design and implementation of automated workflows.
• Experience in microbial bioproduction.
• Lead and contribute at the bench with hands‑on workflow development.
• Deep knowledge of classic and state-of-the-art molecular biology and multiplex library-scale approaches to directed evolution campaigns.
• Demonstrated knowledge of experimental design, the scientific method, and statistical analysis.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills and ability to work within different teams.
• Strong organizational and documentation skills.
• U.S. citizenship.

• Experience with metalloprotein biochemistry.
• Experience with bioconjugate chemistry.
• Experience with fermentation and down-stream processing.
• Proficiency in working with data science teams for scripting pipelines and bioinformatics.

• The opportunity to lead a breakthrough program redefining U.S. supply chain resilience in critical materials.
• A mission-driven,…