Head of Molecular Engineering, Plant Biology Institute

Join us at EIT:

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society. Explore more at www.eit.org.

Welcome to the Plant Biology Institute:

The Plant Biology Institute, headed by Professor Steve Kelly, is a key part of the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) Oxford. The institute aims to develop impactful and commercially sustainable solutions for improving global food production and planetary health through pioneering plant science research.

The Plant Biology Institute will unite world-class researchers who are focused on expanding the frontiers of plant science. Our research is focused on enhancing our ability to feed the planet while simultaneously improving the climate and ecosystem outcomes of food production. By embedding cutting-edge plant science research within an organisation that is focused on solving global challenges at scale, we aim to accelerate the timeline from discovery to global impact.

Areas of exploration include:

• Improved plant productivity, both indoors and outside.
• Reduced reliance on inputs including water, fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides.
• Novel decarbonised plant-based production platforms for food and medicines.
• Advanced technologies that speed up discovery and deployment in plants.

Researchers will have access to state-of-the-art laboratory and plant growth facilities and have opportunities to collaborate with experts at the forefront of research on AI, automation, and generative biology across the EIT ecosystem. They will also work with global leaders in market development, commercialisation, and impact creation. The Plant Biology Institute has long-term substantial funding to support the unique scale and ambition of its vision.

Your Role:

EIT is seeking aHead of Molecular Engineering to build and lead a world-class molecular biology and synthetic biology function within the Plant Biology Institute. The role will create the molecular biology, biochemistry and high-throughput/high-content experimental capabilities needed to support ambitious programmes that seek transformational improvements to agricultural production. The successful candidate will establish a responsive platform that deploys scientific expertise across project teams. You will work closely with colleagues leading bioinformatics, plant tissue culture and transformation and controlled environment and field trial phenotyping teams to convert cutting-edge science questions into transformative real-world impact. The successful candidate will be both deeply technical and a committed leader of people. While they will not perform routine bench work, they will be closely involved in experimental design and scientific coaching - particularly while building the team - to ensure bold ideas are tested rigorously, efficiently and at the pace required to change what is possible in crop science.

Your Responsibilities:

• Build, lead and continuously develop a world-class molecular biology and synthetic biology function, including recruitment of exceptional scientists and establishment of a high-performance, collaborative culture that combines scientific rigour, creativity, operational discipline and a bias toward learning quickly.
• Set the technical strategy, scientific standards and operating model for molecular biology, biochemistry and high-throughput experimental capabilities, incorporating cutting-edge, high-leverage technologies and approaches including sequencing-based high-content readouts, AI, automation, microfluidics and single cell assays.
• Support the plant tissue culture and transformation team with the assembly and delivery of complex, high-efficiency plant delivery vectors built predictably and efficiently from standardized parts. Work with colleagues across the Plant Biology Institute to understand, design, build and validate new DNA/RNA/gRNA/template/protein/peptide parts and vectors that support project goals.
• Provide close technical leadership during the team’s formation: actively guide experimental design, challenge assumptions, coach individual scientists and ensure the team pursues the most informative and efficient experiments, providing both hands-on and intellectual support to project teams.
• Establish Molecular Engineering as a responsive, trusted core facility within a project-based organisation, deploying scientists and capabilities effectively across project teams while protecting functional excellence, prioritisation and staff development.
• Collaborate closely with pipeline partners in bioinformatics, plant tissue culture and transformation, and controlled environment and field trial phenotyping to create an integrated R&D engine for new crop variety discovery and development.
• Establish high-throughput genotyping and molecular characterisation workflows for edited and transgenic plants, including assay design, sequencing-based approaches, data-quality standards and clear hand-offs to downstream teams.
• Build capabilities for CRISPR guide design, multiplex editing, construct architecture and experimental strategies that maximise the interpretability and usefulness of genome-engineering experiments.
• Develop and apply sophisticated high-content and high-throughput assay formats - including single-cell, MPRA and other pooled perturbation approaches - to interrogate plant genetic regulation, cellular function and organismal biology at unprecedented scale.
• Collaborate with existing EIT experts and platforms to identify, evaluate and deploy emerging experimental technologies, including automation, microfluidics, robotics and AI-enabled experimentation, where they can materially increase throughput, insight, quality or speed of learning.
• Create fit-for-purpose processes for experimental planning, documentation, sample tracking, quality control, data capture, prioritisation and technology transfer; lead their design even where ultimate operational ownership sits elsewhere.
• Manage team capacity, project allocation and competing priorities transparently, ensuring platform scientists provide excellent service while retaining the time and autonomy needed to advance shared capabilities.