Scientist II, Automated Strain Engineering

Elevate the Future with Lesaffre

For over 170 years, Lesaffre has been a pioneering force in the world of fermentation, harnessing the power of microorganisms to transform industries from baking to healthcare. As a key global player, we've built a presence in 96 countries, employing 11,000 passionate innovators who share our unwavering commitment to excellence.

Brisbane, CA

Full-time, on-site

For over 170 years, Lesaffre has been a pioneering force in the world of fermentation, harnessing the power of microorganisms to transform industries from baking to healthcare. As a key global player, we've built a presence in 96 countries, employing 11,000 passionate innovators who share our unwavering commitment to excellence.

Recombia Biosciences is a dynamic and innovative company that specializes in developing and commercializing cutting‑edge microbial solutions. As part of the Lesaffre Group since 2022, Recombia leverages extensive expertise in fermentation and microbiology to apply advanced biotechnology, such as metabolic and genome engineering and synthetic biology, in creating customized microbial strains with enhanced functionalities using precision fermentation.

Recombia's mission is to blend biology, engineering, automation, and informatics to improve organism engineering, screening, selection, and scale‑up for a wide portfolio of precision fermentation and biomass production applications, serving diverse industries including baking, brewing, bioethanol, flavors, food, nutraceuticals, and pharmaceuticals.

• The opportunity to represent a passionate organization focused on innovation and sustainability.
• Competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits starting on day one, including health, dental, vision, and 401(k) with employer match.
• 11 paid holidays.
• The ability to leverage your expertise and make a tangible, meaningful impact on the business and our sustainability initiatives.
• Opportunities for continuous growth and development, including the ability to take on new challenges and collaborate across our international business units.

$105K to $168K annually commensurate with qualifications and experience

As a Scientist II in the Automated Strain Engineering (AuSE) Team, you will drive innovation in high‑throughput cloning and yeast strain construction. You will develop new cloning methodologies and strain construction techniques, then scale them to high‑throughput and automated workflows. You will identify processes for optimization, develop robust manual protocols, and collaborate with our Automation Engineer to translate them into scalable, automated systems.

Your work reduces turnaround time, increases capacity, and enables metabolic engineering teams to achieve project goals.

You thrive in a startup‑like environment where you wear multiple hats and see problems as opportunities to build better processes. You are a builder and take manual workflows and make them high‑throughput, then automated. You mentor junior researchers, help colleagues become more efficient, and think constantly about scaling science and freeing researcher time for creativity.

• Excellent cloner:
  Highly skilled in Golden Gate, Gibson assembly, yeast homologous recombination, and restriction enzyme cloning.
• Strain engineering expert:
  Deep expertise in microbial genome editing, strain construction and characterization (Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast and other microbes).
• Builder:
  Identify problems, propose solutions, and execute them. Turn manual work into high‑throughput and automated processes.
• Sequence analyst:
  Analyze sequencing data, make QC decisions on DNA constructs,…