Row Crop Trait Discovery Research Scientist

• Employee Type Full Time Exempt

Description

Ab out Pairwise

Pairwise is agriculture’s gene editing powerhouse, building a healthier world through partnership and plant innovation. Co-founded by CRISPR pioneers, the company’s Fulcrum® Platform accelerates the development of climate-resilient, nutritious, and sustainable crops that are easier to grow and better to ea

Founded in 2017 and based in Durham, North Carolina, Pairwise partners with global leaders and nonprofit institutions to help breeders move faster and transform food and agriculture for farmers, consumers, and the planet. The company collaborates with partners and licenses its Fulcrum® CRISPR tools to diversify breeding programs and bring innovations to market faster—from developing the world’s first pitless cherry to improving staple crops such as corn, soy, cacao, yam, and rice.

Backed by leading investors including Deerfield, Aliment Capital, Leaps by Bayer, Temasek, and Corteva Catalyst, Pairwise has raised $155 million in total funding. In 2025, the company was recognized as one of MIT Technology Review's 10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch and named to Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in Agriculture, while also earning "Best Ag-Bio Company" honors in the Triangle Business Journal's Life Sciences Awards.

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Inspiration, engagement, innovation, creativity, knowing the work you do will have a deep and lasting impact on science and the future of agriculture are all individually great reasons to get out of bed and go to work every day. But what if you could have them all in one position?

At Pairwise, we’re all inspired by our mission, building a healthier world through better fruits and vegetables, and the connection we each have to that mission. When you have a company full of passionate people who are inspired by the work they do, it makes for a team of truly engaged people who are motivated to work together, be creative, and push the bounds of what’s possible, and in the end bring new food to the world in new ways.

The Trait Discovery Research Scientist is a dynamic and exciting position within Pairwise leading well-resourced cross-functional projects to build value for Pairwise and our collaborators. This is a position exercising deep molecular genetics expertise and project leadership capabilities. As a matrixed, cross-functional leader you’ll be instrumental in delivering high-value projects. The person who takes this role will have the opportunity to lead novel crop trait development projects and interface with the Pairwise technology development team to develop novel gene editing tools.

Come join a fantastic team of scientists and leaders at the cutting edge of new breeding technologies.

• Demonstrate proactive and forward-looking project leadership in active collaborations:
• Discovered and nominated trait gene targets and design edit-derived alleles.
• Assessed the feasibility of collaborator-proposed nominations.
• Contributed to collaboration science updates — developing trait-focused nominations, providing hand-off context, and sharing phenotypic results.
• Driven communication, documentation, and alignment across the project team.
• Championed Pairwise shared data systems (ELN, LIMS, data warehouses, etc) for project leadership, edit tracking, and reporting.
• Led projects using Pairwise project management tools and procedures (planning and request software, science/project plans, Gantt charts).
• Partnered with the Associate Director of Row Crop Trait Discovery to define project concepts, then execute them on budget — refining research direction through both incremental improvements and significant course changes.
• Applied scientific expertise in an industrial setting:…