You are a high-achieving scientist or engineer fascinated by one of the hardest unsolved problems in medicine: getting a therapeutic payload into the right cells, in the right tissue, and nowhere else. You are logical, intelligent, and driven to find a solution we can take all the way to patients. Above all you are pragmatic: you hunt for the simplest, fastest solution that gets to patients, not the elegant one that never quite arrives.

We already have a team progressing well on the accurate detection and killing of mutated cells using CRISPR machinery. Finding the right cells and killing them is working. The hard part now is delivery: getting that machinery into the target cells inside the body. You would partner closely with our detection-and-killing team and take the delivery problem as your own.

What does the role involve?

We are studying the molecular damage that accumulates with age to develop strategies for slowing and reversing it. One of those strategies is to selectively kill cells carrying harmful somatic mutations. Cancer is the first, most tractable proving ground for that approach.

You would be a founding member of a new team, dedicated to solving delivery. In this role you will research, develop and test strategies for delivering Cas proteins to cancer cells. Concretely, that means:

Mapping and critically evaluating the delivery landscape (lipid nanoparticles, virus-like particles, engineered vesicles, ligand and antibody conjugates, cell-based delivery) and forming a clear view of what actually works versus what is over-claimed in the literature.

Designing and running experiments to test delivery strategies: biodistribution, cell-type targeting, and above all functional delivery (cargo that escapes the endosome and acts), not just uptake.

Reasoning rigorously about the trade-offs that decide a real therapy: genotoxicity, transience (RNP vs mRNA vs DNA), tissue tropism, re-dosability and immunogenicity, manufacturing maturity, and cost.

Exploiting where biology and anatomy make delivery easy (e.g. accessible tumours and luminal routes) to win early, while building toward the harder systemic problem.

Exploring delivery solutions already developed by other companies and labs, and weighing up whether licensing or adapting an existing platform is the fastest way to reach our goals, rather than building everything from scratch.

Delivery is the rate-limiting step for the entire gene-editing field, not just for us. We see real potential for a delivery platform you help build to become a product in its own right: something we could commercialise independently, beyond our own therapeutic programmes. You would be solving a problem whose value extends far past any single therapy.

Exposure to gene editing, nanoparticle formulation, or gene/drug delivery is beneficial but not required. You will be expected to develop strategy and plan detailed experiments, but we are open to candidates who would prefer to partner with our laboratory scientists to execute experiments.

Why work at Systematic Medicine?

Work on the most challenging problems. Our mission is harder than going to Mars!

Problems that are meaningful.

Long term secure private funding from our parent company.

Work from our premium office location in Melbourne. We are based in the Jumar incubator at the new CSL building.

Flexible hours. We expect dedicated focused time, but don't require long hours.

No travel required. You're welcome to organise conference attendance or go visit other labs.

Exceptional pay $105-155k.

What you need to apply

Capabilities

Strong experience with, or capacity to rapidly learn, therapeutic delivery systems: lipid/polymer nanoparticles, viral or non-viral vectors, virus-like particles, conjugates, or extracellular vesicles.

Strong statistics, experimental design and problem-solving skills.

Some programming experience.

Experience

Not required, but ideally you have 2+ years of full-time work experience post-academia.

Education

Undergraduate degree in bioengineering, pharmaceutical science, nanotechnology, chemistry, molecular biology, biochemistry, biophysics, bioinformatics or similar. We are open to very strong candidates with a background in chemical engineering, maths, physics or computer science.

Postgraduate studies in the above fields are valuable but not required.

You need to demonstrate a passion and excitement about our mission.

Interview Requirements & Timelines

Please provide a short cover letter explaining why you would be suitable for the role based on our above requirements via Seek. Please don't use AI for the cover letter, it is often obvious.

The interview process is multi-stage and involved:

Stage 1: If suitable, we will provide you with a document containing 2-3 questions relevant to our research that we ask that you complete in writing and return via email. This may require up to 1 day of your time to complete at a high-level.

Stage 2: If your response meets expectations, we will then progress to an interview where we will further discuss the questions and other topics.