About Solugen:

Solugen, Inc. is a revolutionary product and technology company seeking to use biology to transform the chemicals industry. Solugen was founded in 2016 and is a post-Series C venture-backed biotechnology company supported by renowned venture capital firms including Founders Fund, Fifty Years, Refactor, Y Combinator, Temasek, GIC, and Baillie-Gifford. Located in Houston, Texas, Solugen is currently scaling up its manufacturing facility to use its chemienzymatic process to manufacture bio-based chemistries for water treatment, agriculture, personal care, and other applications. Solugen currently has 100+ full time employees.

Mission

Solugen’s mission is to decarbonize chemicals manufacturing. As a first step, Solugen has developed a novel chemienzymatic technology platform and has built and started-up a 10,000 tpy first commercial plant that can offset up to 37,000 tpy of carbon dioxide equivalents. This role will directly support Solugen’s mission by continuously improving Solugen’s core catalytic platform. As the activity, selectivity, stability, and manufacturing cost of Solugen’s core catalytic platform continuously improves, the quality of Solugen’s products and our cost to manufacture improve.

Key Outcomes

1. Get oriented, run experiments following plans and procedures and collect analytical data within one month of start date.
2. Developing foundational SOPs for synthesis and characterization of polymers within three months of start date.
3. Support the scale up and purification of key organic reactions and polymerizations.

Key Competencies

Job Specific

• Training in the synthesis, characterization, and/or application of novel polymers towards green chemistry and organic chemistry in general
• Familiarity with advanced polymer and monomer characterization techniques including gel permeation chromatography, MALS, LALLS, viscometry, UV-Vis spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, NMR, ESR, HPLC-MS, GC-MS, SAXS, TEM, SEM, DSC, etc.
• Skillful in the planning, execution, and data interpretation of a full suite of analytical experiments to fully characterize polymeric products and side products
• Expertise in the systematic Design of Experiments
• Analysis and interpretation of kinetic data and development of kinetic models
• High output research and development
• Excellent communication skills, organized, and self-driven with the desire to further develop these skills as the company grows.
• Commitment to safe workplace goals and practices that ensure operational integrity, including compliance with all regulatory policies and procedures.
• Good familiarity with Office products as well as a general level of comfort with online communication and work management platforms such as Dropbox, Google Doc, and Slack.
• Analytical approach to problem solving, with a focus on managing a team environment with attention to results and a sense of urgency.

Company Specific

• Ask a lot of questions, be curious, and have insights into your work
• Be nimble, embrace the speed and ambiguity of startup culture.
• A passion for green chemistry and fighting climate change.
• Ability to self-manage and set your own priorities and schedule.
• Be comfortable working in multiple roles.
• Emphasize safety above all else.
• Respect for others.
• Creative problem solving.
• Willingness to learn and research new engineering/science concepts.

Qualifications

Masters or PhD in Materials Science, Chemistry, or related field with high quality research output in the field of organic synthesis/polymer chemistry/materials science.

Solugen is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other legally protected status.