Senior Scientist I/II, Human Ex Vivo Systems

Are you ready to play a pivotal role in critical ex vivo validation experiments and research activities to support Gordian’s development of novel drug candidates?

We’ve shown that our platform predicts preclinical and clinical physiological responses from in vivo Mosaic screens. You’ll be at the center of a fast-paced team of scientific experts using our platform to run discovery screens for more therapeutic targets than ever before, in the most realistic models of disease!

About the Role:

As Senior Scientist, Human Ex Vivo Systems, you will take ownership of one of our human ex vivo programs (for either HFpEF or OA), optimizing it to validate targets from our drug discovery platform. You will lead the ex vivo team, bringing industry best practices to ensure experiments are rigorous, reproducible, and decision-driving. Generating robust and translational data will be central to your work, ensuring that our therapeutic candidates are tested in systems that mirror human disease biology.

You will work closely with disease area leads and cross-functional teams, aligning ex vivo studies with critical path experiments to de-risk therapeutic programs and provide clear go/no-go decisions. As team lead, you will drive the adoption of gold-standard methodologies, refine approaches to support IND-enabling decisions, and shape the team’s scientific and technical growth. Through mentorship and hands-on leadership, you will foster a culture of excellence, innovation, and collaboration, ensuring that our ex vivo research continues to set a high bar for translational impact.

In your first month, you will review past and ongoing studies across all ex vivo programs, ensuring alignment with translational relevance, regulatory expectations, and industry best practices. Additionally, you will familiarize yourself with Gordian’s collaboration and documentation processes, enabling you to seamlessly interface with functional teams for experimental needs such as virus production or FACS work. For the HFpEF track, you will absorb the current state of human myocyte tissue slice culture protocols from the Head of Cardiac Biology and develop a present strategy to have the system ready for target validation within two months. For the OA track, you will shadow and work with the head of osteoarthritis on ongoing ex vivo experiments, doing supporting assays and absorbing protocols for explant and co-culture systems to the point of independently owning these experiments.

After two months, you will take over procurement and human sample management, mastering contract requirements, sample criteria, and cost-efficient sourcing while also leading weekly logistics for the ex vivo and assays team to optimize coordination, identify bottlenecks early, and manage cross-functional dependencies. You will begin mentoring junior scientists, providing guidance on study design, troubleshooting, and execution to strengthen the team’s technical capabilities. For the HFpEF track, you will have established the human myocyte tissue slice culture system, demonstrating robust slices, validated assays, and high-quality data with appropriate positive and negative controls. For the OA track, you have owned the planning of an entire ex vivo validation project testing therapeutic efficacy of 5-10 treatments across multiple human donor samples.

At the 3-month mark, your understanding will extend beyond models and assays to include mechanisms of action and broader therapeutic testing considerations, allowing you to apply these insights to refine ongoing work. You will propose and take ownership of refinements to ex vivo and translational experiments, ensuring they adhere to industry best practices and drive clear decision-making. Additionally, you will fully own the coordination of ex vivo and assay team logistics, optimizing resource utilization, streamlining experiment execution, and proactively resolving scheduling conflicts. For the HFpEF track, you will have completed the first round of target validation using the human myocyte tissue slice culture system, generating high-quality data to inform therapeutic development. For the OA track, you have completed two rounds of target validation in cartilage explants and human chondrocyte synovium co-cultures.

And You:

You want a chance to do your best work, immerse yourself and excel, alongside people who will inspire you and whom you’ll be excited to spend your days with.

You want to play a key role in an early-stage startup: A fast-paced environment full of both uncertainty and new challenges, demanding relentless resourcefulness.

You are excited to use cutting-edge technology to find the best therapeutic targets, and turn those into drugs.

You have multiple years of experience in drug development, where you have implemented industry best practices in experimental design, ensuring that studies are rigorous, reproducible, and aligned with regulatory expectations.

You understand how to design and execute translationally relevant experiments that generate decision-driving data, de-risk therapeutic programs, and support IND-enabling studies.

You have strong experience in Mammalian cell culture with specific expertise in complex protocols (e.g. iPSC culture, slice cultures, organoids). Ideally you have done long term culture of heart tissues, human iPSCs and ESC culture and differentiation.

Ex vivo systems bring you joy — you are familiar with advanced cultures such as human cardiomyocytes or precision-cut tissue slices and are excited to apply this knowledge to validate targets for real-world diseases. You’re proficient in assay development and execution: RT-qPCR for gene expression in cell and tissue samples, cryosectioning, ELISAs, Western blotting, histology, and image analysis (ImageJ), with a focus on extracting high-quality data to drive insights.

Experience in guiding junior scientists, improving throughput, and collaborating across departments to ensure project success.

You have experience managing and collaborating on time-sensitive projects, and are comfortable guiding and collaborating across multiple teams to execute experiments at a scale beyond any single person.

The Details:

Gordian aims to provide everything you need to thrive. Beyond our community and science, you’ll have enough equity to be a true stakeholder in the company, competitive salary, full health/dental/vision/life insurance, 401k with match, onsite lunch paid for 3 days a week, an onsite gym, whatever vacation you need to be at your peak, remote work flexibility, and access to world-class mentors and advisors to support your professional growth. Our building is in the heart of the biotech capital of South San Francisco.