Senior Scientist – Antibody Deep Screening Platform

Location: Gaithersburg, MD
Type: Onsite

Are You Wired to Build the Future of Biologics Discovery? We’re looking for a scientific tinkerer, a platform builder, a fearless innovator. If you thrive on designing elegant experiments, love pushing the boundaries of science, and bounce back stronger from failure, this is your playground. At AstraZeneca, we put patients first and strive to meet their unmet needs worldwide. Working here means being entrepreneurial, thinking big and working together to make the impossible a reality.

About the Role

Join the Discovery Innovation Team within Biologics Engineering—a multidisciplinary group that invents and implements novel approaches for biologics discovery. Your role will be to advance a deep screening technology that fuses next-generation sequencing with ribosome display to discover and optimize antibodies. This is not a routine role – it will involve careful design, prototyping and testing where you will need to fail fast and learn faster, ultimately bringing forward a technology to deploy in therapeutic programs

What You’ll Do

• Optimize wet lab components for in-vitro transcription/translation, ribosome display, and antibody screening.

• Construct NGS libraries for Illumina platforms, then work with our NGS core to build workflows to enable parallel antibody screening and sequencing

• Run enrichment campaigns using phage or yeast display with diverse libraries (naïve, synthetic, immune).

• Present findings to cross-functional teams with clarity and conviction.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in molecular biology or related field

• M.S. with 5+ years’ experience

• B.S. with 10+ years’ experience

Required Skills:

• Proven track record in antibody discovery using display-based in-vitro systems, from library generation to panning and screening of monoclonal binders.

• Strong experimental design skills with a bias toward rapid iteration and outcome-driven workflows.

• Hands-on, end-to-end experience with library sequencing on NGS platforms.

• Excellent communication and data presentation skills.

Desired Skills:

• Tissue culture and functional cell-based assay development.

• Fluorescence microscopy and image analysis.

• Computational fluency in NGS data analysis, including AI-based approaches.

About AstraZeneca in Gaithersburg, MD:

Our Gaithersburg, Maryland facility creates life-changing medicines for people around the world. This campus is the home of R&D in the US and employs more than 3,500 experts in our field and is only a short drive from Washington, DC. Here, we play host to some of the most cutting-edge technology and lab spaces, all designed to inspire collaboration and cross-functional science. We believe employees benefit from being challenged and inspired at work. We are dedicated to creating a culture of inclusion and collaboration.

The Gaithersburg site offers a variety of amenities to help boost productivity and help keep our employees stay happy and healthy. This includes a fitness center, employee healthcare clinic, electric vehicle charging stations, dry cleaning, full-service cafeteria and copy center. This is where you’ll find newly-designed, activity-based work spaces to suit a variety of working styles while increasing collaboration between teams.

The annual base pay for this position ranges from $116,284.00 - $174,426.00 . Hourly and salaried non-exempt employees will also be paid overtime pay when working qualifying overtime hours. Base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. In addition, our positions offer a short-term incentive bonus opportunity; eligibility to participate in our equity-based long-term incentive program (salaried roles), to receive a retirement contribution (hourly roles), and commission payment eligibility (sales roles). Benefits offered included a qualified retirement program [401(k) plan]; paid vacation and holidays; paid leaves; and, health benefits including medical, prescription drug, dental, and vision coverage in accordance with the terms and conditions of the applicable plans. Additional details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment. If hired, employee will be in an “at-will position” and the Company reserves the right to modify base pay (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, Company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.

Date Posted

Closing Date

Our mission is to build an inclusive environment where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants and employees. In furtherance of that mission, we welcome and consider applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of their protected characteristics. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please complete the corresponding section in the application form.