Sustainable Food Systems Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Since our founding in 1924, we've cut cardiovascular disease deaths in half, but there is still so much more to do. To overcome today’s biggest health challenges and accelerate this progress, we need passionate individuals like you. Join our movement, be part of the progress, and help ensure a healthier future for all. You matter, and so does the impact you can make with us.

The American Heart Association has an excellent opportunity for a Scientific Lead, Multi-Omics, working with The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI)®. This position can be home-based.

This is a full-time, benefits-eligible, grant-funded opportunity. Funding will expire one year from the start date.

Sustainable Food Systems @ Heart is an innovation portfolio of the American Heart Association focused on transforming food systems into measurable drivers of human and planetary health. Within Sustainable Food Systems @ Heart, The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI)® builds the scientific infrastructure to move food toward a health solution.

The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI)® is a science-to-action effort of the Rockefeller Foundation managed by the American Heart Association. PTFI offers standardized multi-omics tools, data, and training to a global ecosystem to characterize food quality and biomarkers of consumption and health. Our global ecosystem is mapping food quality across macronutrients, micronutrients, and specialized metabolites, and their variation across food systems.

PTFI’s vision is a world where stakeholders in food, agriculture, and health are enabled to lead data-driven solutions that deliver healthy food from sustainable food systems.
https://foodperiodictable.org

The Association offers many resources to help you maintain work-life harmonization through your changing needs and life situations. To help you be successful, you will have access to Heart U, our award-winning corporate university, as well as additional training and support, locally.

#TheAHALife is more than a company culture; it is our way of life. It embodies our commitment to work-life harmonization and is guided by our core values where our employees can thrive both personally and professionally. Discover why you will Be Seen. Be Heard. Be Valued at the American Heart Association by following us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X, and at heart.jobs.

The Scientific Lead, Multi-Omics drives demand for PTFI tools and data while leading laboratory expansion, enablement, and technical support across the global ecosystem. The role also contributes to analysis and translation of multi-omics datasets including advancing clinically relevant thresholds to expand adoption and application of PTFI findings across research, clinical, and food system contexts.

Reporting to the Executive Director of Sustainable Food Systems @ Heart, this role provides scientific leadership to ensure scalable development and implementation of PTFI’s standardized multi-omics methodologies for food composition analysis and food–health research. The Scientific Lead supports growth of the PTFI laboratory network by identifying and onboarding high-capacity laboratories, aligning training resources and analytical workflows, and guiding harmonized data generation and interpretation across the ecosystem to enable biomarker discovery, cross-study comparability, and translation of molecular food composition data into biological and clinical insights.

Global Lab Network Expansion

• Identify, assess, and engage high-capacity analytical laboratories to join the PTFI global ecosystem.
• Conduct technical evaluations of prospective institutions, including instrumentation, workflows, personnel capacity, and infrastructure.
• Support scientific due diligence for laboratory partnerships, contracts, and agreements.
• Strengthen adoption of standardized PTFI tools, protocols, and datasets across academic, nonprofit, healthcare, and industry partners.
• Contribute to growing global demand for PTFI’s standardized multi-omics tools and datasets through scientific partnerships and ecosystem engagement.

Multi-Omics Scientific Leadership for Food & Human Biospecimens

• Serve as in-house subject matter expert on multi-omics methodologies for food biomolecular characterization and human biospecimen analysis.
• Contribute to planning strategies for analytical method development including prioritization for method development of new and/or updated PTFI analytical platforms.  
• Provide scientific guidance on metabolomics and related omics platforms supporting food composition and translational food–health research.
• Guide harmonization of analytical workflows, quality control frameworks, and technical standards across participating laboratories.
• Support integration of food composition data with human biological datasets in collaborative research contexts.
• Contribute to analysis and interpretation of multi-omics datasets to identify biomarkers and biologically meaningful patterns across foods and human biospecimens.

Laboratory Enablement & Capacity Strengthening

• Work with the PTFI Lab Enablement Team to implement standardized tools and protocols across the laboratory network.
• Provide technical guidance and troubleshooting support to ecosystem laboratories.
• Coordinate with instrumentation vendors, software providers, and technical service partners to optimize analytical performance and capacity.
• Partner with Food EDU to integrate training resources into lab enablement and workforce development.
• Monitor adoption of standardized workflows and support reproducibility and quality improvement across laboratories.

Platform Integration & Translational Alignment

• Collaborate with data science and AI teams to ensure multi-omics outputs are harmonized and interoperable across food and health datasets.
• Support integration of laboratory outputs into PTFI databases, analytics tools, and translational platforms.
• Contribute to workflows linking food composition data with human biomarker and clinical research applications.

External Engagement & Scientific Contribution

• Represent PTFI in technical discussions with academic, nonprofit, healthcare, and industry partners.
• Contribute to grant proposals, technical reports, and scientific publications.
• Support communications articulating the scientific value of multi-omics approaches for food and health research.

Education

• Master’s degree with relevant experience.
• PhD in Analytical Chemistry, Food Chemistry, Biochemistry, Clinical Sciences, or related field strongly preferred.

Professional Experience

• Minimum 3+ years of experience in multi-omics or analytical chemistry research. 5+ years of experience, is preferred.
• Expertise in mass spectrometry-based platforms (LC-MS/MS required) with an emphasis on nontargeted approaches.
• Experience applying omics approaches to food composition analysis and / or human biospecimens in clinical or translational research contexts.
• Experience with laboratory method development, validation, and quality control.
• Experience in multi-institutional or collaborative scientific environments.
• Familiarity with food systems research and nutrition science preferred.
• Industry, commercialization, or business development experience a plus.

Technical Competencies

• Deep understanding of metabolomics workflows, data processing pipelines, and QA/QC best practices.
• Familiarity with data harmonization, metadata standards, and reproducibility principles across distributed labs.
• Ability to translate complex analytical outputs across food and human biological datasets.

Leadership & Systems Skills

• Strong analytical and systems-oriented thinker.
• Ability to bridge scientific depth with operational execution.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to collaborate across interdisciplinary teams.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-growing, mission-driven environment.

Ability to travel 10% of the time per year.

The expected pay range will be $100,000 to $115,000. Pay is commensurate with experience; geographic differentials to the pay range may apply. The American Heart Association reserves the right to pay more or less than the posted range. The American Heart Association invests in its people. Here are the main components of our total rewards package. Visit Rewards & Benefits to see more details.

• Compensation – Our goal is to ensure you have a competitive base salary.  That’s why we regularly review the market value of jobs and make adjustments, as needed.
  
• Performance and Recognition – You are rewarded for achieving success through annual salary planning and incentive programs;  eligibility for an incentive program is based on the type of position.  
  
• Benefits – We offer a wide array of benefits including medical, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance, along with a robust retirement program that includes an employer match and automatic contribution.  As a mark of our commitment to employee well-being, we also offer an employee assistance program, employee wellness program and telemedicine, and medical consultation.
  
  
• Professional Development – You can join one of our many Employee Resource Groups (ERG) or be a mentor/mentee in our professional mentoring program.  Heart U is the Association’s national online university, with more than 100,000 resources designed to meet your needs and busy schedule.
  
• Work-Life Harmonization – The Association offers Paid Time Off (PTO) at a minimum of 16 days per year for new employees.  The number of days will increase based on seniority level.  You will also have a total of 12 paid holidays off each year, which includes several days off at the end of the year.
  
• Tuition Assistance - We support the career development of all employees.  This program provides financial assistance to employees who wish to further their education and career in relation to their current duties and responsibilities, or for potential future positions in the organization.

The American Heart Association’s 2028 Goal: Building on over 100 years of trusted leadership in cardiovascular and brain health, by 2028 the Association will drive breakthroughs and implement proven solutions in science, policy, and care for healthier people and communities. The greatest discoveries in health must reach everyone where they are.

At American Heart Association | American Stroke Association, our mission is to be a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, religion, age, language, sexual orientation, national origin and physical or cognitive abilities.
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