The Opportunity (Full-time, San Francisco)

Great science depends on a great lab: stocked, organized, safe, and ready to run. We're hiring the person who will make that happen at Taxa. You'll split your time roughly 50/50 between the bench and everything else: supporting high throughput NGS, strain engineering, and other workflows that keep our science moving day to day. The other 50% is the connective tissue of R&D: inventory, time-sensitive shipments, vendor management, EH&S, equipment upkeep, and the dozens of systems that a cutting-edge biotech lab depends on.

You'll work shoulder-to-shoulder with scientists and engineers across synthetic biology, molecular biology, and bioprocess engineering, and you'll learn the inner workings of a cutting-edge biotech organization from the inside. One hour you might be pulling a time point off a growth curve; the next, troubleshooting a backorder or coordinating a dry ice shipment to a collaborator. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in service of a team, and wants to be the person who makes a fast-moving lab actually work.

Required Qualifications

✔️ Hands-on microbiology experience — 3+ years in an academic or industry biology lab, comfortable executing standard microbiology workflows independently (PCR, plating, bacterial culture, sterile technique, reagent/buffer prep). You're happy spending a significant portion of your week at the bench.

✔️ Initiative and ownership — you don't wait for tasks to appear, and you're allergic to procrastination. You proactively clean things up, anticipate what the team will need next, and execute without being asked.

✔️ Known for exceptional organization — teammates naturally comment on how you're obsessively organized, and always keep things labeled, tracked, and orderly.

✔️ Adaptability — comfortable switching between scientific, logistical, and administrative contexts — from your lab work, to troubleshooting a backorder, to organizing a team offsite, all in the same day.

✔️ Full on-site availability — this is a fully in-person role at our San Francisco lab.

✔️ Authorized to work in the U.S. — visa sponsorship is not available for this role.

Highly Desirable Experience

✔️ Additional wet-lab techniques — hands-on experience with NGS library prep, sample QC, or other molecular biology workflows beyond core microbiology.

✔️ Safety and compliance — experience managing EH&S, biological waste disposal, and adherence to biosafety practices.

✔️ Logistics — experience handling time-sensitive domestic and international shipments of biological material, scheduling visits, and managing equipment/facility maintenance schedules.

✔️ Inventory and purchasing — experience ordering reagents and consumables, maintaining up-to-date inventories of perishable reagents, and managing lab vendor communications.

✔️ Administrative support — experience scheduling appointments, processing documents, and organizing events.

Transparent Compensation

✔️ Base salary — $110,000 annual salary.

✔️ Equity — meaningful equity

✔️ Benefits — comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.

✔️ Retirement — 401(k) plan with 6% employer match.