Bioengineering Scientist

Alkion BioInnovations, an Imperial College’s spinoff, is a young biotech company located in Versailles, France. Alkion has developed an innovative patented production method of complex active ingredients in plants. Our mission is to offer a sustainable, standardised and quality production of high-value ingredients to pharmaceutical, agri-food and cosmetics industries. Alkion has received many French and EU awards and grants for its pioneering works on vaccine adjuvants, cannabinoids and recombinant proteins. 

We are currently looking for a Genetic Bioengineering Scientist, specialist in CRISPR, to join our R&D team on exciting and challenging pharmaceutical and agrifood projects from development to industrialisation, directly reporting to our CSO.

  • Your role:
  • Define and supervise scientific and technological projects to produce metabolites and recombinant proteins in plants
  • Work collaboratively with other team members
  • Participate in the laboratory’s global organisation 
  • Report to CSO
  • Participate on R&D tasks (non exhaustive):
  • Design, build and engineer a variety of plasmid constructs including binary vectors
  • Transient transformation into various plants via agroinfection to test the designs and catalytic activity of the CRISPR/Cas machinery
  • Generate stable edited lines with CRISPR/Cas9 machinery in crops
  • Analyze edited events via different molecular tools and sequencing
  • In vitro plant propagation methods, callus transformation and regeneration methods
  • Recombinant expression, purification and characterization of proteins
  • Attend conferences and make scientific presentations

* Your profile:

  • Ph.D. or Ms/Engineer degree in plant biology or plant biotechnology with preferably a strong emphasis on molecular biology and protein biochemistry 
  • Background to include a minimum of 2 years in a public or private organisation with a strong experience with CRISPR tools (mandatory)
  • Experience in managing projects, including project planning and reporting
  • Positive experience of management of interns or technicians
  • Usage on a daily basis of molecular biology methods (PCR, qPCR, sequencing, gene editing technology…) and protein biochemistry (extraction, isolation and detection)
  • Experience on chloroplast transformation is a plus
  • Industrial experience is a plus
  • Knowledge of patent application is a plus
  • Ability to work in English – International experience

* Your personality:

  • Demonstrated scientific creativity, initiative, independent thought and problem-solving capability
  • Good communication, organization, teamwork skills
  • Entrepreneurial mind, positive and open-minded 

We are committed to gender equality, diversity and inclusion.

The company’s working languages are French and English. We have an international background and welcome international high potential candidates.

Competitive package depending on profile. 

Start date: Feb-March 2024

Location: MobiLAB Versailles, France

Contact: Julien Sechet, CSO : Julien.sechet@alkinnov.com