Lab Manager, Horns Lab

About Arc Institute

The Arc Institute is a new scientific institution conducting curiosity-driven basic science and technology development to understand and treat complex human diseases. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Arc is an independent research organization founded on the belief that many important research programs will be enabled by new institutional models. Arc operates in partnership with Stanford University, UCSF, and UC Berkeley.

While the prevailing university research model has yielded many tremendous successes, we believe in the importance of institutional experimentation as a way to make progress. These include:

• Funding: Arc fully funds Core Investigators’ (PIs’) research groups, liberating scientists from the typical constraints of project-based external grants.
• Technology: Biomedical research has become increasingly dependent on complex tooling. Arc Technology Centers develop, optimize, and deploy rapidly advancing experimental and computational technologies in collaboration with Core Investigators. 
• Support: Arc aims to provide first-class support—operationally, financially, and scientifically—that will enable scientists to pursue long-term high-risk, high-reward research that can meaningfully advance progress in disease cures, including neurodegeneration, cancer, and immune dysfunction.
• Culture: We believe that culture matters enormously in science and that excellence is difficult to sustain. We aim to create a culture that is focused on scientific curiosity, a deep commitment to truth, broad ambition, and selfless collaboration.

Arc has scaled to nearly 300 people to date. With $650M+ in committed funding and a state of the art new lab facility in Palo Alto, Arc will continue to grow quickly in the coming years.

About the position

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Lab Manager to join the Horns Laboratory at the Arc Institute. In this position, you will be responsible for solving day-to-day logistical challenges associated with the operation of a scientific laboratory. Key roles of the Lab Manager include overseeing daily operations, managing resources, and ensuring that the lab functions safely and efficiently. The ideal candidate must have a strong background in life sciences laboratory research, and be exceptionally organized, responsible, and self-starting.

About you

• You are excited to help a group of brilliant and passionate people do their best work to advance science, technology, and medicine.
• You are enthusiastic about science and about answering questions related to complex human diseases, genomics technology, and synthetic biology.
• You are creative and eager to explore new approaches beyond the techniques you are familiar with.
• You understand the importance of collaboration and thrive when working with a diverse team of scientists.
• You are exceptionally organized and capable of juggling multiple tasks simultaneously.
• You take initiative, anticipate needs, and proactively solve problems.
• You are a team player and interface well with members of the lab, as well as others across an organization, such as lab operations, safety, and administrative teams.
• You are comfortable communicating firm safety and operations expectations, holding peers accountable respectfully.

In this position, you will

• Manage day-to-day operations of mixed lab and office space, including molecular biology and tissue culture laboratories.
• Organize and manage laboratory resources, including ordering supplies, managing inventory, and maintaining equipment.
• Develop and maintain a receiving and restocking system for supplies and consumables.
• Steward new laboratory instrumentation, including coordinating deliveries and collaborating with technicians for equipment installation.
• Manage cryofreezers in a freezer farm, monitoring liquid nitrogen levels daily, connecting new liquid nitrogen dewars to cryofreezers as required, and responding to alarm notifications from the monitoring system, including maintaining alarm trees and after-hours response as needed.
• Maintain records of equipment maintenance and scheduling or performing preventative maintenance as required (e.g. running regular incubator sterilization cycles and scheduling hood certifications).
• Arrange and oversee laboratory work orders in the building operations portal.
• Liaise with an Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) team to receive new chemicals and biological materials, including entering chemicals into CIMS, communicating with end users, and delivering chemicals to compatible storage locations.
• Oversee the management and recordkeeping of Arc’s hazardous chemical and biological waste accumulation and removal in collaboration with EHS team.
• Interface with operations and EHS teams to maintain safety standards, coordinate training, and manage lab records.
• Communicate operations updates to scientists on a regular basis (e.g. weekly digest: outages, policy changes, safety reminders).
• Organize, prepare, and manage common life sciences lab reagents (e.g. plasmids, cell lines), including provenance/QC records (e.g. sterility checks, mycoplasma testing).
• Draft, organize, maintain, and teach standard operating protocols (SOPs) for common lab techniques (e.g. cloning, plasmid prep, transfection).
• Organize and maintain data storage and backup practices.
• Coordinate onboarding checklists (safety, training, accounts, instrument access) for new lab members and offboarding checklists. 

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in life science, chemistry, or a related field plus 2-4+ years of relevant work experience, preferably in a research laboratory.
• Strong attention to detail, resourcefulness, and good organization skills.
• Must be exceptionally proactive and demonstrate initiative.
• Passion for solving technical problems, sometimes through performing analysis of data and/or situations.
• Experience with lab management, including resource management and organization, and adherence to safety standards.
• Experience maintaining clean spaces and sterile equipment.
• Working knowledge of biological safety, chemical safety, and general laboratory safety.
• Experience working in a Biosafety Level 2 or 2+ (BSL-2 or BSL2+) lab preferred.
• Able to lift 50 pounds.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to work both independently and in a highly collaborative multidisciplinary environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with and knowledge of molecular biology workflows, such as PCR, cloning, plasmid preparation, NGS is a plus.
• Experience with mammalian cell culture, cell engineering, and cell-based assays (e.g. flow cytometry, microscopy) is a plus.

The base salary range for this position is $89,000 to $110,750. These amounts reflect the range of base salary that the Institute reasonably would expect to pay a new hire or internal candidate for this position. The actual base compensation paid to any individual for this position may vary depending on factors such as experience, market conditions, education/training, skill level, and whether the compensation is internally equitable, and does not include bonuses, commissions, differential pay, other forms of compensation, or benefits. This position is also eligible to receive an annual discretionary bonus, with the amount dependent on individual and institute performance factors.