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Process Development Engineer

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Location

Alameda, CA

Job Type

FULL TIME

About us

At Shiru we believe that food should be delicious and nourishing without negatively affecting our planet. Acknowledging our growing global population as well as the imminent effects of climate change, Shiru’s mission is to create better protein ingredients that will catapult us into a sustainable food future.
With our mission in mind, Shiru makes high quality, functional food proteins through better leveraging our precious environmental resources. To do this, we employ technologies originally  created to solve problems in adjacent industries, including computational biology, machine learning, and industrial fermentation and bioprocessing.
We apply computational intelligence to find the most functional natural food proteins in the world, harnessing the inherent ability of microflora to produce them. We then partner with food and beverage companies to incorporate these unique protein ingredients into everyday products. Shiru is now expanding our team of dedicated professionals across multiple disciplines to make enhanced protein ingredients for a better world.

About the role

As a Process Development Engineer, your impact will be to translate novel protein discoveries into functional food ingredients and products. You will conduct fundamental lab-scale work to conceive and develop scalable processes to create our protein ingredients, then initiate collaborations with pilot and manufacturing partners to further optimize these processes and produce preparative samples. Ultimately, your work will lead to the robust and economic commercial production of Shiru’s functional protein ingredients and will support the application for regulatory filings and process IP protection.  This is an exciting enterprise at the cutting edge of food technology and you will have all the resources you need to ensure world-class success.

About you

You have extensive practical experience in process development for the recovery of fermentation-derived proteins and products. You have led projects developing, optimizing, advancing, and scaling downstream processing technologies and have a deep understanding of the critical factors involved in commercialization. You are capable of balancing the needs of the science & engineering of food-grade fermentation with economic and business factors and as such you are a skilled collaborator with internal and external stakeholders. You have a curious mind and wish to push the boundaries of knowledge in this fast-developing discipline while being practical enough to know that concrete results matter. Finally, you can express and communicate the issues and requirements of your field to other stakeholders in the business to enable rapid strategic decision-making.

Responsibilities

  • Design and perform experiments to develop scalable processes to produce functional protein ingredients
  • Collaborate with fermentation scientists to increase productivity and recovery of target ingredients
  • Build out Shiru’s in-house lab and pilot-scale capabilities
  • Optimize process performance at pilot-scale to consistently meet product specification and improve process economics
  • Use statistical tools to design and analyze experimental data efficiently for scale-up and troubleshooting
  • Identify and collaborate with pilot and manufacturing scale partners
  • Prepare SOPs and technology transfer documents for internal and external clients and partners
  • Produce product samples for internal and external product development work
  • Mentor junior engineers and researchers

Requirements

  • PhD with 4 years’ industry experience, or MSc with 7+ years’ industry experience, or BSc with 10+ years’ industry experience
  • Experience in process development, bioprocessing, and scale-up in an industrial setting
  • Experience working with fermentation-based protein purification
  • Experience with design of experiment, data analysis, and troubleshooting
  • Strong practical understanding of protein production processes at lab and production scale

Attributes

    • Outstanding team player with excellent written, verbal, and visual communication skills
    • A curious mind with the desire to grow, learn and adopt new technologies and techniques for process improvements
    • Able to flex and adapt within an exciting startup environment
    • A passion to develop better, more tasty & sustainable food products for the world in line with the Shiru mission
At Shiru, we’re looking for people with passion, grit, and integrity. You’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t precisely match the job description. We’re expecting your skills and passion to stand out—and set you apart—especially if your career has taken some extraordinary twists and turns. Please join us in this singular opportunity to create the future of food!
Shiru is an equal opportunity employer who values diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Shiru offers competitive compensation and employee benefits along with an attractive equity package commensurate with candidate qualifications.
At Shiru, we’re looking for people with passion, grit, and integrity. You’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t precisely match the job description. We’re expecting your skills and passion to stand out—and set you apart—especially if your career has taken some extraordinary twists and turns. Please join us in this singular opportunity to create the future of food!
Shiru is an equal opportunity employer who values diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Shiru offers competitive compensation and employee benefits along with an attractive equity package commensurate with candidate qualifications.
APPLY FOR THIS JOB

Shiru is an equal opportunity employer who values diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Shiru offers competitive compensation and employee benefits along with an attractive equity package commensurate with candidate qualifications.

Come and change the food game with us

Shiru is on a mission to impact a billion lives. We are changing the traditional food system by creating alternative functional food ingredients that will catapult us into a sustainable food future.

 

Still reading? Nice, we like you already. Does Shiru look like the right company for you? Apply today!

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