{"id":3379845,"url":"https://alion.io/job/biosphere-director-technology-development","title":"Director, Technology Development","company":{"id":3792702,"name":"Biosphere","domain":"biosphere.io","url":"https://alion.io/company/biosphere-2","size_band":"11-50","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":null},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"head","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Oakland, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":200000,"max":250000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":250000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Bioreactors","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-27T22:22:36Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-27","last_verified_at":"2026-10-31T01:46:22Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":3,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":3},"description":"About the Role\nBiosphere has a technically ambitious roadmap with concrete milestones: new reactor technologies to de-risk and integrate into our demonstration plant. Your first job is to help us execute on these scoped challenges. You’ll own day-to-day R&D priorities, experimental decisions and delivery within agreed budgets. As you deliver, you’ll take increasing ownership of our highest-risk, highest-reward technical work, guided by our commercial priorities and commitments.\nThis is a management role. You’ll lead our small, multidisciplinary R&D team: setting priorities, coaching, reviewing data, and hiring as the work requires. You’ll bring a passion for rigorous experimental design, and prioritize projects backed by sound technoeconomic analysis. Everyone builds at a company our size, so expect to be hands-on too. This role will collaborate closely with our Principal Engineer and capital projects team. You’ll lead development and validation of the technologies assigned to your team, and together you’ll agree on requirements, acceptance criteria and the handoff into plant design and commissioning.\nResponsibilities\nLead and grow the R&D team\nExecute the milestones on our roadmap: take new reactor technologies and subsystems from proof of concept to validated designs, including pilot-scale reactors and next-generation reactor prototypes for our government-funded programs.\nDeliver validated designs and specifications for the 20,000-liter line, and support installation and commissioning.\nLead the funded research projects assigned to you through delivery and technical reporting, working with project managers. Contribute to proposals when the work fits our priorities and capacity.\nMake process and techno-economic calls. For example: is it worth more to replace a specialty cleaning chemical with dilute commodity caustic, or to run our cleaning cycle at 65 °C instead of 80 °C?\nSet the standard for experimental design and statistics. For each test, decide what it must show, how many runs that takes and how to analyze it, including for rare events like contamination.\nBuild the tools we use to track experiments and characterize failures.\nRun the portfolio of R&D efforts: give each program an owner, budget, milestones and a next decision; rank work by value, remaining cost and delivery risk; stop discretionary work that no longer justifies its cost, and escalate changes to contractual commitments.\nWhat success looks like\nIn your first 60 days, agree on a delivery plan for the R&D portfolio with the Biosphere management team: priorities, owners, milestone dates, acceptance criteria and dependencies with the plant team.\nThe first technologies on our roadmap have validated designs, test data and acceptance criteria, and are built into the demonstration plant’s design.\nThe funded research projects you lead meet their milestones and budgets without delaying our priority commitments.\nYou and the team make routine R&D decisions. Decisions about strategy, major spending or new commitments reach leadership with data, economics and a recommendation.\nYou run the development portfolio independently and bring evidence-backed recommendations for what we tackle next.\nQualifications\nHave led a complex, multidisciplinary technical team developing and scaling new process technology, in biotech, chemicals, materials, energy, water or another process industry.\nProcess engineering experience: mass and energy balances, unit operations, heat and mass transfer, scale-up, and experience with techno-economic analysis.\nAre fluent in experimental design and applied statistics: designed experiments, hypothesis testing, sample size and power, and reliability or rare-event analysis.\nWrite and present clearly, to engineers and to funders.\nAn advanced degree helps but isn’t required.\nPreferred skills\nBioreactor or fermentation equipment development, pilot-scale reactor design and scale-up\nCleaning and sterilization (CIP, SIP, sterility validation) and hygienic design (ASME BPE, EHEDG)\nFirst-of-a-kind process plants or capital projects\nGovernment-funded R&D programs\nInstrumentation and controls\nBenefits\nAt Biosphere, our goal is to empower talented individuals who are driven by the desire to work on tackling society's biggest challenges. To that end, we take pride in striving to be an equal opportunity employer with a healthy work culture, creating an environment where high performers can thrive. We currently offer the following benefits:\nCompetitive compensation through a mix of salary and equity.\nUnlimited paid vacation and sick/leave days + public holidays.\nComprehensive health insurance for employees and their dependents, including dental and vision.\nPaid family leave.\nMembership at Pacific Pipe Climbing gym next door.\nSalary range: $200,000-$250,000 per year.\nBiosphere is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5022,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Health insurance","Parental leave"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Biotechnology","Industrial Biotechnology","Bioprocessing"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-28T04:25:45Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":2,"expected_fill_days":27,"reasons":["conf:2","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-30T05:48:23Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":250000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/biosphere-director-technology-development","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/biosphere-director-technology-development.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-31T05:35:39Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":8103,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-01T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":3792702},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=3792702"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fbiosphere-director-technology-development"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fbiosphere-director-technology-development"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fbiosphere-director-technology-development"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/biosphere-director-technology-development\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fbiosphere-director-technology-development"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3379845}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"biosphere.io","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3379845},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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