Senior Research Associate, LNP Process Development

Position Summary:

We are looking for an exceptional, enthusiastic, and highly motivated Senior Research Associate to join the Non-Viral Delivery team at Orbital. The successful candidate will work closely with the Senior Engineer of LNP Process Development to support formulation, process development, and scale-up activities for delivery matrices of nucleic acids. This role is critical for advancing Orbital's early LNP pipeline into later stages of development and manufacturing.

Responsibilities:

• Establish, execute, and document protocols for preparation and characterization of complex formulations loaded with nucleic acid cargos for in vitro and in vivo studies.
• Support the development and scale-up of formulations across components, mixing geometries, and payloads.
• Design and conduct experiments to enable a robust and reproducible formulation process for clinical trial materials.
• Design and conduct experiments to evaluate and optimize formulation stability.
• Support technology transfer activities with CDMO and industry partners.
• Support generation of high-quality documentation for regulatory filings and technology transfer.
• Coordinate sample preparation and transfer with internal and external collaborators.
• Maintain an accurate and detailed laboratory notebook and record of experiments.
• Aid in interpretation and communication of results and actively participate in scientific discussions and group meetings.

Qualifications:

• B.S or M.S. degree in Chemical or Biomedical Engineering or related field.
• Must have 3-5+ years of experience. Title and scope of role will be commensurate with experience.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience with scale-up and process development of nanoparticle formulations in an industry environment is required.
• In-depth understanding of current methods for non-viral delivery of nucleic acids using lipid nanoparticles (LNP) is required; experience with liposomes and/or polymeric nanoparticles is a plus.
• Familiarity with the theory and practice of controlled mixing, buffer preparation, exchange (including tangential flow filtration), and sterile filtration is required.
• Proficiency in formulation analytics including (DLS, zeta potential, UV-Vis and fluorescence spectrophotometry, HPLC, etc.) required.
• Prior experience with DoE and statistical software such as JMP is preferred.
• Ability to adapt to increasing scope and complexity of work brought on by growth/change.