Head of Molecular Engineering, Plant Biology Institute

Join us at EIT

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society. Explore more at www.eit.org.

Welcome to the Plant Biology Institute

The Plant Biology Institute, headed by Professor Steve Kelly, is a key part of the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) Oxford. The institute aims to develop impactful and commercially sustainable solutions for improving global food production and planetary health through pioneering plant science research.

The Plant Biology Institute will unite world-class researchers who are focused on expanding the frontiers of plant science. Our research is focused on enhancing our ability to feed the planet while simultaneously improving the climate and ecosystem outcomes of food production. By embedding cutting-edge plant science research within an organisation that is focused on solving global challenges at scale, we aim to accelerate the timeline from discovery to global impact.

Areas of exploration include

• Improved plant productivity, both indoors and outside.
• Reduced reliance on inputs including water, fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides.
• Novel decarbonised plant-based production platforms for food and medicines.
• Advanced technologies that speed up discovery and deployment in plants.

Researchers will have access to state-of-the-art laboratory and plant growth facilities and have opportunities to collaborate with experts at the forefront of research on AI, automation, and generative biology across the EIT ecosystem. They will also work with global leaders in market development, commercialisation, and impact creation. The Plant Biology Institute has long-term substantial funding to support the unique scale and ambition of its vision.

Your Role

EIT is seeking a Head of Molecular Engineering to build and lead a world-class molecular biology and synthetic biology function within the Plant Biology Institute. The role will create the molecular biology, biochemistry and high-throughput/high-content experimental capabilities needed to support ambitious programmes that seek transformational improvements to agricultural production. The successful candidate will establish a responsive platform that deploys scientific expertise across project teams.

You will work closely with colleagues leading bioinformatics, plant tissue culture and transformation and controlled environment and field trial phenotyping teams to convert cutting-edge science questions into transformative real-world impact. The successful candidate will be both deeply technical and a committed leader of people.

While they will not perform routine bench work, they will be closely involved in experimental design and scientific coaching - particularly while building the team - to ensure bold ideas are tested rigorously, efficiently and at the pace required to change what is possible in crop science.

Responsibilities

• Build, lead and continuously develop a world-class molecular biology and synthetic biology function, including recruitment of exceptional scientists and establishment of a high-performance, collaborative culture that combines scientific rigour, creativity, operational discipline and a bias toward learning quickly.
• Set the technical strategy, scientific standards and operating model for molecular biology, biochemistry and high-throughput experimental capabilities, incorporating cutting-edge, high-leverage technologies and approaches including sequencing-based high-content readouts, AI, automation, microfluidics and single cell assays.
• Support the plant tissue culture and transformation team with the assembly and delivery of complex, high-efficiency plant delivery vectors built predictably and efficiently from standardized parts. Work with colleagues across the Plant Biology Institute to understand, design, build and validate new DNA/RNA/gRNA/template/protein/peptide parts and vectors that support project goals.
• Provide close technical leadership during the team’s formation: actively guide experimental design, challenge assumptions, coach individual scientists and ensure the team pursues the most informative and efficient experiments, providing both hands-on and intellectual support to project teams.
• Establish Molecular Engineering as a responsive, trusted core facility within a project-based organisation, deploying scientists and capabilities effectively across project teams while protecting functional excellence, prioritisation and staff development.
• Collaborate closely with pipeline partners in bioinformatics, plant tissue culture and transformation, and controlled environment and field trial phenotyping to create an integrated R&D engine for new crop variety discovery and development.
• Establish high-throughput genotyping and molecular characterisation workflows for edited and transgenic plants, including assay design, sequencing-based approaches, data-quality standards and clear hand-offs to downstream teams.
• Build capabilities for CRISPR guide design, multiplex editing, construct architecture and experimental strategies that maximise the interpretability and usefulness of genome-engineering experiments.
• Develop and apply sophisticated high-content and high-throughput assay formats - including single-cell, MPRA and other pooled perturbation approaches - to interrogate plant genetic regulation, cellular function and organismal biology at unprecedented scale.
• Collaborate with existing EIT experts and platforms to identify, evaluate and deploy emerging experimental technologies, including automation, microfluidics, robotics and AI-enabled experimentation, where they can materially increase throughput, insight, quality or speed of learning.
• Create fit-for-purpose processes for experimental planning, documentation, sample tracking, quality control, data capture, prioritisation and technology transfer; lead their design even where ultimate operational ownership sits elsewhere.
• Manage team capacity, project allocation and competing priorities transparently, ensuring platform scientists provide excellent service while retaining the time and autonomy needed to advance shared capabilities.

Experience

• PhD in molecular biology, biochemistry, synthetic biology, biotechnology, microbiology or other relevant field, with 10+ years post-Ph.D. experience.
• Demonstrated experience leading, and ideally building, a scientific team within an ambitious and fast- research environment.
• Strong people-management capabilities, including hiring, coaching, performance management, delegation, career development, building of inclusive teams and facilitating collaboration and innovation.
• Deep technical expertise in modern molecular and synthetic biology including the engineering of specific molecules (DNA, RNA, vectors, and/or proteins such as enzymes, receptors and peptides) and/or a strong command of cutting-edge, high-throughput, high-content and automated methods, with the ability to set rigorous standards for assay design, controls, data quality and interpretation.
• Strong project and resource-management skills, including prioritising a portfolio of work, managing dependencies and communicating risks, trade-offs and decisions clearly. Experience operating effectively in a project-based environment, serving multiple scientific programmes while maintaining clear priorities and robust functional standards.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly and credibly to scientists across disciplines, senior leaders and external partners.

Experience

• Industry experience in plant biotechnology, crop improvement, seed technology, agricultural biotechnology or a closely related life-science sector.
• Experience developing or overseeing molecular workflows that support plant transformation, edited or transgenic plant generation, and molecular characterisation.
• Experience with plant biochemistry, enzyme characterisation and/or metabolic engineering, including connecting molecular interventions to biochemical or pathway-level outcomes.
• Experience working across/engineering diverse microbial systems, e.g. E. coli, Agrobacterium, Klebsiella, Bacillus, Azotobacter, Corynebacterium, yeasts and filamentous fungi.
• Experience designing, building and quality-controlling diverse targeted mutagenesis libraries—including site-saturation, combinatorial and scanning libraries—using approaches such as degenerate-oligonucleotide design, PCR-based mutagenesis, Golden Gate or Gibson assembly, and oligo-pool synthesis; with robust assessment of library coverage and representation by sequencing and integration into high-throughput screening workflows.
• Experience building a molecular biology, synthetic biology, protein-biochemistry or high-throughput biology function from the ground up.
• Experience with pooled libraries and massively parallel assays, such as MPRAs, CRISPR screens, saturation mutagenesis or other high-throughput perturbation-and-readout systems.
• Experience designing and applying single-cell and single-nucleus sequencing workflows, particularly in plant tissues, including sample preparation, nuclei isolation, experimental design and interpretation of cell-type-resolved transcriptomic data. Familiarity with spatial transcriptomics or other high-content plant cell-profiling approaches would also be valuable.
• Experience applying automated liquid handling, laboratory robotics, microfluidics, miniaturised assays or design-of-experiments approaches to scale experimental biology.
• Practical experience with AI-enabled experimental design, active learning, machine-learning-guided protein or enzyme engineering, or other computational approaches that improve experimental efficiency.
• Experience with metabolic pathway engineering, heterologous expression, enzyme optimisation or quantitative analysis of plant metabolites and extracts.
• Familiarity with transformation-vector architecture, Agrobacterium-mediated delivery and the molecular considerations that influence plant transformation outcomes.
• Experience establishing laboratory processes, sample-tracking systems, data standards, quality-management practices or technology roadmaps for a growing R&D organisation.
• Track record of evaluating external technologies, managing specialist vendors or forming productive academic and industry partnerships.

Benefits

• Salary dependent on experience + travel allowance + bonus
• Enhanced holiday. Our annual leave allowance is 25 days plus 8 bank holidays and an additional 3 days between Christmas and New Year. You will also have the opportunity to purchase an additional 5 days annual leave in January and July.
• Pension - Employer contribution 7.5%, minimum employee contribution 5%
• Life Assurance.
• Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance as standard for you, your partner and any dependents. Including hospital Cash Plan
• Employee discounts
• Electric car scheme
• Nursery Salary Sacrifice scheme
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Family Planning
• Neurodiversity support including advise and assessments
• Coaching & Therapy services