Innovation Scientist- Startup Incubation

About TandemLaunch

TandemLaunch is a unique Canadian venture studio. Since 2010, we've created 30+ deep-tech ventures with a combined portfolio value exceeding $700M. We focus on commercializing innovations in consumer electronics, hardware-enabled technologies, machine learning, and embedded systems, working directly with researchers from major university labs.

About the Role

We're hiring an Innovation Scientist to help turn early-stage university research into investable companies. Working alongside founders and TandemLaunch executives, you'll own the narrative and external positioning for 1-2 new ventures per year from pre-incorporation through their first institutional round — shaping their demo storyline, customer and investor materials, and co-leading the search for each venture's founding CEO. This role will shape the ventures we capitalize and how they're positioned in the market and investors.

What You’ll Do

• Own the pitch storyline for each venture — the live narrative we use with investors and strategic partners, investor days, and customer meetings. Drive timelines, manage milestones, and ensure each gate is hit.
• Craft customer and investor-facing materials — executive summaries, white papers, pitch decks, demo videos — working directly with researchers to translate deep tech into "why now" and "who cares."
• Co-lead the founding CEO search for each new venture alongside TandemLaunch executives. You'll source through TandemLaunch's 15-year-deep operator network, screen for venture-specific fit, and shepherd the hiring process through. By year two, you'll have helped place 2-3 founding CEOs.
• Contribute to portfolio-wide initiatives (investor events, demo days, pitch coaching) as needed.

What We’re Looking For

• Technical fluency sufficient to hold a credible conversation with hardware engineers, ML researchers, and physicists. We typically see this come from a PhD in engineering or physics — but a research-track MSc plus deep-tech industry experience, or an engineering degree plus founding-team experience at a hard-tech startup, can be just as compelling.
• Storytelling chops — you've turned complex technical work into a narrative that landed with non-technical audiences.
• Strong written and verbal communication in English, with the ability to translate technical depth into clear narrative for non-technical investors and customers.
• Self-directed and energized by ambiguity — comfortable defining your own work when the brief is incomplete.
• Genuine curiosity and an appetite for breadth — you'd rather go an inch deep across five domains than a mile deep in one.

What We Offer

• A seat at one of very few venture studios globally with 15+ years of track record in hardware-enabled deep tech.
• Deep involvement in 1-2 ventures per year from pre-incorporation through Series A, with 3-4 ventures in active orbit at any time.
• Direct mentorship from operators (co-founders, product leads, CEOs across the portfolio).
• A dynamic, entrepreneurial environment where you'll have real impact from day one.
• A supportive team that values curiosity, initiative, and collaboration.

TandemLaunch is committed to building a community of excellence, equity, and diversity. We welcome applications from women, underrepresented minorities, persons with disabilities, 2SLGBTQ+ communities, and other candidates who will enrich our ideas and perspectives.