Principal Scientist​/Senior Principal Scientist, Virology

Virology - Principal Scientist / Senior Principal Scientist

Location: Seattle, WA (onsite)

Company: Venture-backed biotech (stealth mode)

We're an early-stage, venture-backed biotech operating in stealth mode. We're building a small, high-performing team that moves quickly from question to experiment and works closely across disciplines to make clear, data-driven decisions.

This will be the second scientist on our internal virology team. We are seeking a senior individual contributor who combines scientific leadership with substantial bench execution. This is a hands‑on player‑coach role. You will work alongside our Senior Scientist to expand live-virus neutralization capabilities, own and grow our viral strain library, and establish advanced human airway models in-house. Success will come from designing strong experiments, generating high-quality data, troubleshooting difficult methods, and helping a small team move quickly.

• Design, optimize, and execute in vitro neutralization assays using live virus and, where useful, pseudovirus or reporter-virus systems.
• Perform and interpret TCID
  50, plaque, focus-forming, or related infectivity assays. Establish controls, acceptance criteria, and data-quality standards that support reproducible decisions.
• Troubleshoot assay performance across viral strains, cell substrates, reagents, plate formats, and readout methods. Improve throughput without sacrificing rigor.

• Maintain a well-characterized library of viral strains, including sourcing, receipt, quarantine, inventory, passage history, master and working stocks, aliquoting, storage, and distribution.
• Propagate and titer viral stocks. Optimize cell substrate, multiplicity of infection, media, culture conditions, harvest timing, clarification, and freeze-thaw conditions when strains do not grow reliably.
• Sequence viral stocks to confirm identity, genetic integrity, and consistency with expected sequences. Review and document consensus changes and relevant minority variants.
• Create fit-for-purpose stock-release criteria and records that connect passage history, titer, sequence, sterility or contamination checks, and intended experimental use.

• Develop and run infection and neutralization studies in human nasal organoids and/or primary human airway epithelial cells differentiated at an air-liquid interface (ALI).
• If these methods are new to you, train hands‑on with our academic collaborators and rapidly transfer their protocols, critical reagents, quality criteria, and analytical readouts into our lab.
• Troubleshoot donor variability, epithelial differentiation, infection conditions, dosing, sampling, and virologic readouts to produce robust and interpretable data.

• Conduct serial-passage, escape-selection, plaque-purification, clonal-isolation, and fitness experiments as program needs evolve.
• Help scale day-to-day BSL-2 operations, including SOPs, biosafety practices, equipment readiness, sample tracking, inventory, and interfaces with facilities and vendors.
• Coordinate selected work with external laboratories and academic collaborators while retaining direct ownership of experimental design, data quality, and interpretation.

• Work as a close technical partner to the existing Senior Scientist. Share methods, review data, and raise the quality and pace of the team's experimental work.
• Present concise data summaries, conclusions, and recommended next steps to scientific and company leadership.
• Author protocols, SOPs, technical reports, and relevant sections of regulatory documents.

• Ph.D. in virology, microbiology, molecular biology, cell biology, or a related field, with 6+ years of relevant postdoctoral and/or industry experience. Meaningful industry experience is strongly preferred.
• Deep, recent hands‑on experience propagating, quantifying, and troubleshooting live viruses in a BSL-2 environment.
• Demonstrated…