Avidity Jobs in New York (NOW HIRING)

Title: Director of Immune Phenotyping Platform
Location: Upper East Side
Org Unit: MCC Laboratories
Work Days:
Weekly Hours: 35.00
Exemption Status: Exempt
Salary Range: $236,300.00 - $287,300.00
*As required under NYC Human Rights Law Int 1208-2018 - Salary range for this role when Hired for NYC Offices
Position Summary
Responsible for establishing and overseeing the performance, reliability, and scalability of state-of-the-art immune readout technologies. This role ensures operational excellence through instrument and method ownership, assay set up and standardization, workflow optimization, and regulatory compliance. The Director provides cross-functionality with personalized TCR identification, T-cell engineering and clinical translation teams as well as external collaborators to deliver high quality, reproducible immune monitoring data that support translational immunology discovery and clinical translation.
Job Responsibilities

• Establish processing and storage of cell products, PBMCs, tumor biopsies, bone marrow, plasma etc samples.
• Establish multiparameter flow cytometry for absolute cell counts and phenotype; CyTOF for deep state mapping; high-purity cell sorting of immune populations including tumor-reactive T cells for single-cell -omics.
• Establish GLP-grade TCR/CAR-T study monitoring assays including bespoke product potency and phenotype analysis; bulk TCR sequencing; VCN analysis (ddPCR); Integration site analysis; plasma cytokines/chemokine assay; plasma inflammatory proteomics; ctDNA.
• Establish multiparameter microscopy and segmentation-enriched WES/RNAseq immunogenetics analytics to evaluate target antigen expression heterogeneity and tumor genetic alterations mediating immune escape.
• Establish methods for assessing tumor antigen specificity of T clonotypes including scRNA/TCRseq; and functional HTS methods including massive parallel testing of functional reactivity to autologous tumor, organoids, cell lines, APCs, peptides.
• Establish a platform for massively parallel TCR cloning and pooled functional screening in reporter and primary T cells for HTS; develop downstream HTS assays of specificity and function including CTL assays.
• Establish assays for validation of TCR specificity, avidity (Kd, Koff, Kon), function, high-throughput peptide dilution arrays.
• Establish a state-of-the-art platform for evaluation of alloreactivity and unintended HLA interactions, off-target risk assessment including X-scan, random peptide libraries, library-on-library for HTS; APC lines and normal tissue in vitro surrogates.
• Establish methods for microscopy-based HTS and deeper cell characterization using time lapse cell imaging; imaging flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, high content imaging, cryo-expansion microcopy.
• Establish tissue-based immune interrogation assays including spatial -omics coupled with TCR RNAscope and capture of transferred engineered T cells.

Education

• Master's Degree or Ph.D. in an appropriate field. Equivalent work experience will be considered.

Experience

• More than 10 years of related direct hands-on experience. Approximately 3 years or related experience in GLP/GMP or Pharmaceutical environments.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• In-depth knowledge of immune assay platforms including flow cytometry, ELISA, and cell-based functional assays.
• Strong understanding of instrument calibration, preventative maintenance, and management.
• Demonstrates knowledge of assay validation principles including accuracy, precision, specificity, and robustness.
• Familiarity with institutional and federal regulatory documentation and compliance standards.
• Effectively manages biospecimen handling and sample integrity practices.
• Knowledge of data management systems and electronic data integrity principles.

Licenses and Certifications
Working Conditions/Physical Demands
Ability to work flexible hours, evenings and weekends, when requested for special projects.
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