This is your opportunity to join our Antibody Discovery Team at OBT! We’re looking for a scientist who enjoys collaboration and brings strategic thinking and creativity to complex challenges. If you’re passionate about driving scientific excellence and ready to make an impact, we’d love to hear from you.
About Oxford Biotherapeutics
Oxford BioTherapeutics (OBT) is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing antibody therapeutics for the treatment of cancer. You will play an integral role in the pre-clinical development of novel immuno-oncology therapeutics. Our OGAP® platform is the world's largest, cancer specific, membrane protein library, directly measuring plasma membrane protein expression in patient tumors. OGAP is used to identify novel, highly tumor specific antigens for novel first-in-class ADC, Bispecific T-cell Engager (BITE®) and Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) targets. Our lead asset, OBT076, is an Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC) in Phase 1b clinical development. Our clinical and pre-clinical pipeline of novel biologics is balanced between internal programs, focused on ADCs and checkpoint regulators, and externally partnered programs with key innovators in oncology such as Roche, Boehringer Ingelheim and Zymeworks.
Purpose of the Role
We are seeking a highly motivated and innovative Scientist to drive the discovery and optimization of mAbs and multi-specific antibody formats. This role will spearhead sequence and structure-guided protein engineering initiatives, leveraging cutting-edge AI/ML tools and display technologies to enhance antibody affinity, specificity, stability, and developability. The ideal candidate will combine deep technical expertise with strategic vision, fostering an open and collaborative research culture.
This is a lab-based role, and candidates must be willing to work onsite 5 days a week.
Key Responsibilities
Antibody Engineering
- Design, engineer, and optimize antibodies to improve binding affinity, specificity, stability, and developability.
- Lead affinity maturation and developability campaigns using directed-evolution and sequence & structure-based design.
- Develop, screen and validate display library-based workflows.
- Develop and validate affinity binding assays (SPR), interpret complex kinetic and affinity datasets, and integrate findings into project decisions.
- Engineer conditionally active antibody variants (e.g., enhanced binding at low pH, cleavable peptide masks)
- Humanize mouse antibodies
- Familiar with protein structure modeling tools, such as PyMol.
- Experience in affinity-tuning monoclonal antibodies to achieve high, medium, or low binding affinities.
Scientific Leadership & Collaboration
- Define and oversee end-to-end protein engineering workflows, ensuring resource efficiency, timeline adherence, and risk management.
- Mentor and guide scientists, setting high standards for data quality and fostering career development.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with Antibody Discovery, Protein Sciences, Bioinformatics, AI, and Project Management teams.
- Cultivate a collaborative, data driven, and innovative research culture aligned with company goals.
Innovation & AI/ML Integration
- Work with AI scientists to optimize antibody properties (affinity, specificity, developability) and use display technologies to test, optimize, and select final leads.
- Leverage AI/ML-enabled structural tools for modeling and hypothesis generation.
- Drive continuous improvement of workflows and methodologies.
Qualifications
Education & Experience
- PhD. in Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, or related discipline.
- 7+ years of relevant industry experience in therapeutic antibody engineering OR exceptional postdoctoral training.
- Must have experience with display technologies (phage, yeast, or mammalian display).
- Expert in library creation, selection, and enrichment analysis
- Proven track record in affinity maturation, antibody developability, multi-specific optimization and library-based engineering.
- Expertise in structure-guided protein engineering
Technical Expertise
- Deep knowledge of antibody structure-function relationships and protein engineering strategies.
- Hands-on experience with display technologies (phage, yeast, mammalian) and developability characterization (DSF/DSC-light, DLS, SEC).
- Working knowledge of AI/ML tools for protein structure prediction and optimization
- Engineering and optimizing bi- or multi-specific antibody formats, T-cell engagers, ADCs, and other complex biologics is highly desirable.
- Experience with antibody humanization, affinity maturation, and optimization of antibody developability for therapeutic applications is preferred.
- Experience in engineering conditionally active antibodies (e.g., pH-dependent variants for enhanced low-pH binding, peptide masking technologies) and knowledge of payload conjugation strategies for ADCs would be advantageous.
Benefits Offered
- Medical, dental and vision insurance for employee and dependents
- FSA (Flexible Spending Account)
- STD, LTD, Basic Life and AD&D Insurance, Supplemental Life
- 401(k) Plan
- 120 hours of Paid Time Off
- 5 sick days per year
- 11 public holidays
- Employee Referral Bonus Program
- Annual bonus program
- New hire stock options
Equal Opportunities Statement
OBT is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits unlawful discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin or ancestry, age, disability, marital status, and veteran status. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment. One of our top priorities is to maintain the health and wellbeing of our employees and their families. To achieve this goal, we offer comprehensive benefits
Why Join Us
We promote a culture of innovation, responsibility, and steadfast commitment to our goal. Together, we believe we can pool our resources and our uniqueness to develop novel, robust cures for one of the most challenging health conditions today. We recognize that our team is only as good as the people in it. Our people have used the words friendly, collaborative, and hard-working to describe the culture here at OBT. Above all, we trust each other.
This is why, while we strive to ensure that we hire only the best people to meet our goal, we also strive to provide a working environment that is based on cooperation, innovation, and mutual respect.
Top Skills
What We Do
Oxford BioTherapeutics (OBT) is a clinical stage oncology company based in Oxford, UK; San Jose, CA and Morristown, NJ, USA, with a pipeline of first-in-class immuno-oncology (IO) and antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) based therapies designed to fulfil major unmet patient needs in cancer therapeutics.
Our lead asset, OBT076, is an Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC) in Phase 1b clinical development. OBT076's dual mechanism of action allows it to act as a 'primer' to re-engage the patient's immune system while at the same time targeting cancer cells directly.
OBT’s proprietary OGAP® target discovery platform is based on one of the world’s largest proprietary cancer membrane proteomic databases, with data on over 5,000 cancer cell proteins providing unique, highly qualified oncology targets, of which three programs are in clinical development in the USA and Europe.
The company’s pipeline and development capabilities have been validated through multiple strategic partnerships, including with Boehringer Ingelheim, ImmunoGen and Kite Pharma as well as other world leaders in antibody development (such as Amgen, WuXi, Medarex (BMS), Alere (Abbott)).
