Scientist, Clinical Development

OVERVIEW

Kingdom is building the world's first AI-native functional ingredients company, with $40M+ in venture funding from top investors. We've pioneered Superculture® ingredients: an entirely new class of clinically validated postbiotics, made from natural microbes, that target the root causes of unmet health needs for people and pets. We’re launching one new clinically backed ingredient every year.

We're looking for a high-performing Scientist, Clinical Development, to join our small but mighty team. This is an AI-native science role: you'll own Kingdom's pet clinical study program end-to-end, deploying custom and integrated LLM-tooling to automate and accelerate your work. We want a PhD-level scientist who can both apply rigorous judgment to study design, biomarker selection, statistical analysis, and scientific reporting, and who is excited to build AI infrastructure that lets us run more clinical trials. This is a science role, with success measured by the clinical studies we complete and the peer-reviewed publications we deliver.

Our edge starts with one of the world's largest, most diverse biobanks of proprietary microbial strains, sourced from natural foods and environmental sources. On top of it, we've built a scientific platform spanning ingredient discovery, clinical trials, and manufacturing scale-up that lets our small team outcompete companies 100X+ our size.

We're actively selling Superculture® Pet Oral and Superculture® Pet Immune to pet food and supplement brands. Less than a year in market, our ingredients are already powering dozens of products from leading pet brands, with overwhelmingly positive customer reception. One in three product launches using our ingredients has earned a #1 New Release on Amazon, and nine in ten of our customers are launching additional products with us.

Now we're scaling rapidly. We'll launch our first Superculture ingredient for humans later this year, opening up an entirely new market. And we're expanding internationally, starting with the EU/UK and China, with Australia/New Zealand and other APAC markets on the horizon.

This is a full-time, in-person role at our headquarters in Brooklyn, NY, with occasional travel to scientific and industry conferences.

RESPONSIBILITIES

In this role, you'll report to the Senior Scientific Director, and will work with our science team, co-founders, CRO partners, and the commercial team to:

Run Kingdom's pet clinical study program end-to-end:

• Design and execute canine and feline studies: literature review, population and biomarker selection, SOP writing, statistical analysis planning, data processing and vetting, and internal and external reporting

• Own operational strategy for pet studies, including evaluation of internal capabilities vs. external partners

• Evaluate new CRO partners from a technical perspective, serve as the primary technical contact with pet CROs, and make CRO recommendations to the team for relevant studies

• Expand pet clinical strategy across additional CROs and a broader range of study types

Translate science into evidence and customer-facing materials:

• Lead peer-reviewed scientific publications for our pet ingredient programs (Superculture® Pet Oral, Superculture® Pet Immune, and future pet ingredients)

• Generate commercial-grade materials for the GTM team from the primary technical reporting, sharp enough to hold up in front of customers

Build and deploy LLM-tooling:

• Build and maintain pet-specific LLM-tools across literature review, study design, statistical analysis, and scientific reporting

• Connect tools into a single, end-to-end pet clinical pipeline, with intermediate handoffs eliminated and technical oversight and quality preserved

• Contribute to Kingdom's broader AI infrastructure for clinical science, alongside other scientists on the team

COMPETENCIES & QUALIFICATIONS

• PhD (or equivalent depth) in a life-sciences field, 0-3 years post-graduate.

• Strong statistics and quantitative methods

• Advanced coding literacy in R, Python, or equivalent

• Direct experience designing and running clinical studies is a strong plus

• AI-native: daily Claude Code use or equivalent, prompt fluency, comfort rebuilding research cadence around agentic tools, with experience building tooling around scientific work

• High agency: self-starter who identifies pain points, proposes a plan and solution, and drives their own learning

• Scientific judgment under ambiguity: makes defensible tradeoff calls grounded in first-principles reasoning

• Clear and effective written and verbal communication

WHY JOIN KINGDOM

• Meaningful work: contribute to a category-defining biotech company at the frontier of postbiotic science.

• Growth and learning: Scope expands as Kingdom moves into new pet benefit areas, functional ingredients, and adjacent application areas. Build an extensive scientific publication portfolio alongside an LLM-augmented workflow portfolio.

• Ownership and autonomy: End-to-end control of an established pet clinical program (9+ completed studies, several peer-reviewed publications) and substantial latitude to shape our clinical AI infrastructure. Early and sustained exposure to the Chief Science Officer.

• Team and culture: small but mighty team that's high-performing, kind, and AI-native.

OUR VALUES

• Solve from first principles. We have a deep-seated curiosity about the most important problems facing the business. Our nature is to dig deeply into their details, question assumptions, understand the smallest details, and drive towards the best possible solution using these insights. This makes us very effective in crafting new solutions and operating in ambiguous circumstances.

• Collaborate with kindness. We are exceptionally low ego, and treat each other with respect, compassion, and humility. We hold one another to high standards, but do so while being deeply committed to each other's wellbeing. We invest in each other's growth, and are willing to engage in difficult conversations and deliver direct, constructive feedback when necessary.

• Be resourceful and resilient. We figure out how to make things work, and how to accomplish our goals regardless of what stands in the way. We're keen to confront challenges together through proactive planning and scrappy methods. When things go wrong, we learn quickly from our missteps, adapt our approach, and push forward.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS

To build a world-class team, Kingdom is transparent and generous with our compensation package. We anchor cash salary above market-rate compensation for your role, and go above and beyond with equity stock options, as we want everyone to be aligned with and benefit from our long-term success.

For this position, we are most actively considering candidates at the Scientist level (0-3 years post-PhD for Scientist; cash salary range: $110K-$125K). This does not include stock options, which we’ll discuss during the interview process.

Kingdom additionally offers an excellent benefits package including:

• 100% fully-covered, best-in-class medical, vision, and dental insurance for yourself (and 95% for your spouse/family)

• Generous and flexible PTO, in addition to 13 company-wide holidays

• Full commuter coverage

• Fully stocked kitchen with fruits, snacks, and beverages + weekly team lunches

• 12-weeks fully-paid parental leave

• 401k program with minimal fees