Junior Scientist/Scientist - Protein & RNA Design

PopVax is an Indian full-stack biotech building first-in-class and best-in-class vaccines and cancer immunotherapies using machine learning-driven design and relentless empiricism. We design, develop, and manufacture our own RNA medicines end-to-end because we believe great pharmaceutical science can only flourish in tight feedback loops that iterate rapidly. PopVaxs experimental work and clinical dose production is based at the RNA Foundry, our integrated R&D and GMP-capable clinical dose production facility in Hyderabad.

PopVaxs north star is our goal of developing novel vaccines and therapeutics over the next decade with the cumulative ability to save 1 million lives each year the Million Lives Mission. To that end, we are developing first-in-class vaccines against Hepatitis C Virus, Strep A, and adult pulmonary TB, broadly-protective best-in-class vaccines against COVID-19, influenza, and HPV, and precision immunotherapies against hard-to-treat solid tumours such as liver cancer and pancreatic cancer.

Our work is funded by Vitalik Buterins Balvi Fund, the Gates Foundation, the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and Renaissance Philanthropy. Our first vaccine program will begin a Phase I clinical trial in the US in mid-2026 conducted & sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). We intend to put 6 novel vaccines and immunotherapies into Phase I clinical trials over the next 3 years.

No matter the job title, each persons role at PopVax is ultimately focused on helping take safe & effective new medicines that represent a step-change improvement on the current standard-of-care to the people who need them as fast as possible. If you want to work where the ambition is high, the learning curve is steep, and the work matters to billions, youll feel at home here.

If youre excited by the idea of advancing scientific, clinical, and regulatory frontiers of vaccines and immunotherapies, spending each day developing medicines with the potential to save millions of lives, and building a generational global pharmaceutical company in India along the way join us!

As our first program moves into the clinic, we are beginning preclinical work on a variety of novel mRNA vaccines and therapeutics in parallel. As such, we are seeking a highly motivated and detail-oriented researcher to join our Computational Design Team as a Junior Scientist/Scientist Protein & RNA Design to design broadly effective next-generation vaccines and therapeutics. This is a unique opportunity to operate on the frontier of our understanding of the physiological impact of cutting-edge protein design and nucleic acid modalities. This position reports to the VP of Protein Design.

Key Responsibilities Will Include

• Literature review, including locating and summarising the latest research in fields of interest, retrieving specific papers or other peer-reviewed sources, and, when required, formulating recommendations on the applicability of this research to PopVaxs projects
• Identify data sources and execute new project ideas into a quick-working prototype
• Provide high-level scientific expertise for new research projects, contributing to all phases of a project
• Analyse and interpret challenging clinical and non-clinical data
• Keeping up-to-date on best practices and latest developments in vaccine design
• Produce high-quality and detailed documentation for all projects in a structured manner
• Assist senior team members in antigen selection and design for eliciting broad immune response
• Assist senior team members in designing and optimising mRNA sequence for stability and efficient and accurate translation for a given protein sequence

• Masters in Bioinformatics or a related field with experience in structural (protein) bioinformatics is required for junior scientists. PhD or 4+ years of industrial experience are required for the Scientist position.
• Excellent literature search and reviewing skills
• Experience in protein structure modelling and visualisation
• Experience in protein-protein docking
• Experience in molecular dynamics simulation
• Experience analysing raw data from next-generation sequencing data.
• Knowledge of central dogma and translation regulation
• Proficiency in working in LINUX environment and in at least one of the standard scientific programming languages like Python or R
• Knowledge of biological databases and basic bioinformatics tools such as BLAST, Multiple Sequence Alignment, etc.
• Basic knowledge of immunology
• Working understanding of machine learning tools
• Comfortable in working as a team and capable of working independently
• Yes I can attitude

We offer very competitive compensation, comprehensive health insurance with the option to cover immediate family (including pre-existing conditions), and, most importantly, a collaborative work environment focused on solving the cutting-edge multidisciplinary challenges of our novel mRNA platform.