Job Details

Principal Scientist/Sr. Principal Scientist – Antibody Engineering

About Enlaza Therapeutics

Enlaza Therapeutics is a biotech company developing an innovative synthetic biology platform to create a disruptive new class of biologic therapeutics. We are dedicated to the development of these novel therapies to help patients suffering from cancer and other serious diseases.

Role Description

As the lead of Protein/Antibody Engineering, this is a central role in the Protein Therapeutics team connecting our discovery and development teams. We seek a candidate with extensive hands-on experience in the engineering and optimization of hit molecules to direct and oversee protein engineering to accomplish specific project goals. The successful candidate will have a strong technical background enabled by a combination of structural and molecular biology and protein sciences. They will work closely with empirical and computational protein engineering staff to design and execute campaigns and will be a key scientific partner for multiple project and function leads.

Responsibilities

• Mentor and/or directly supervise protein engineering scientists, providing technical oversight and professional development.
• Closely collaborate and coordinate with inter-disciplinary discovery and development function leads, scientists and project management to progress molecules from initial hits to developable clinical candidates.
• Oversee or perform design and construction of antibody/protein combinatorial libraries and engineering campaigns.
• Lead continuous improvement in laboratory workflows.
• Supervise the collection, aggregation and curation of experimental and theoretical data to inform predictive algorithms.
• Advise project leads on therapeutic formatting, target structure-function hypotheses, and design and selection of tool molecules and reagents.
• Assist scientific leadership with technology development and strategy.

Requirements

• Advanced degree (MS, PhD) in Biochemistry, Structural Biology, or other relevant discipline and 5+ years of directly related biopharmaceutical industry experience.
• Deep knowledge of protein structure, interactions, and physicochemical properties.
• Advanced user of enterprise molecular cloning and structural modeling and visualization software packages, such as Genious, SnapGene, Schrodinger, MOE.
• Advanced understanding of sequence and structure features and properties of multiple antibody formats (traditional mAbs, bi/multi-specifics, scFvs, single domain antibodies, and others).
• Extensive hands-on experience with therapeutic protein and antibody engineering, humanization, liability removal, and optimization.
• Background in leveraging developability assessment (solubility, stability, impact of formulation, manufacturability) to optimize protein design.
• Ability to synthesize structural and biophysical data, including epitope mapping, binding kinetics and physicochemical profiling, to inform decision-making.
• Familiarity with advanced in silico experiments, computer programming, databases, and machine learning integration in antibody discovery/engineering.
• Experience directly managing scientists.

Additional experience preferred by not required:

• Experience with plate-based assay design and development and high-throughput workflows.
• Experience with engineering of small proteins or enzymes.

Compensation

In addition to a competitive compensation package with stock options, the company also offers a comprehensive benefits package for our employees and their families, which includes medical, dental, vision, and supplemental disability insurance.