--- title: 'Scientist, HIV Virology at Parallel Bio' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/scientist-hiv-virology-parallel-bio-san-francisco-gkf4d324wmzs' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-13' --- # Scientist, HIV Virology at Parallel Bio - **Company:** Parallel Bio - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-05-01 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/parallel-bio/5148f9eb-768a-478b-ad89-8dfe5fbfd197 ## Job description The Mission Drug discovery has a translation problem: more than 95% of drugs that succeed in animal models fail in humans. We're building the alternative: human-first drug discovery, powered by organoids and AI, running on real human biology from the very first experiment. Our platform is 87% concordant with clinical patient data - a vast improvement over the 3% translational success rate of animals. We’ve demonstrated the ability to model immunotoxicology, immunogen stimulation, and two autoimmune diseases with more on the way. Numerous pharma partners including 3 Fortune 500 companies are already using the platform. We've raised ~$30M from AIX Ventures, Marc Benioff, Jeff Dean, and Y Combinator. With the FDA Modernization Act 3.0 and the FDA's March 2026 validation framework, the regulatory tailwinds only continue to get stronger. The opportunity ahead of the company is generational: build the first scaled engine for generating real human biological data, and use it to fundamentally change how medicines are discovered. ## The Role HIV research is about to need a new home. You're building it. The U.S. government is moving rapidly toward banning animal models in drug discovery, with the sharpest restrictions aimed at nonhuman primates. NHPs are currently the only animal model for HIV. When they go away, the only path left to discover and develop drugs against HIV in real human tissue runs through human immune organoids. That's our platform. We need someone to come in and stand up our HIV program from scratch — equipment, reagents, biosafety, assays, SOPs, the whole stack — so that when the first HIV-based project lands at Parallel Bio, the lab is already ready to run it. You'll be the in-house HIV expert — the person every team turns to for the science, the safety, and the bench craft. This is a foundational scientist hire on a program that could become one of the company's most strategically important assets. ## What you'll do - Build the HIV lab from the ground up. Equipment, reagents, SOPs, controls — the whole stack, ready before the first project arrives - Be the in-house HIV expert. When the company has questions about HIV biology, virology, or assay design, you've got all the answers. - Stand up the assay menu. Viral load, infectivity, latency reactivation, neutralization, integration, replication kinetics — every assay we'd plausibly need, set up, validated, and ready to run. - Execute the experiments. Project leads hand you experiments. You run them with rigor, think critically about what the data is showing, and make smart real-time adjustments when reality diverges from the plan. - Co-own biosafety. Run a lab that meets the BSL2+ bar in both letter and spirit, and stays that way, working with our Head of Technical Operations. Day one, week one, month one - Day one. Meet the Platform and R&D leads. Tour the facility. See the BSL2+ setup as it stands today, and start the list of what's missing. - Week one. Map the gap between where the lab is and "ready to run an HIV project tomorrow." Start ordering, drafting SOPs, and pulling the supplies and reagents together. - Month one. The lab is functionally HIV-ready: biosafety in place, core assays validated, reagents in stock, SOPs written, controls established. You're confident answering "yes, we can run that" to any reasonable HIV question that comes our way. ## Who you are - An HIV virologist, full stop. You're a current or recent postdoc from a top-tier HIV lab. You know the field, the players, the assays, the controls, and where every experiment tends to break. - Fluent in BSL2+. You've worked under BSL2+ conditions for years. You understand the regulatory and safety stack cold and can run a lab that holds up to it. - Master of HIV assays. You’re deeply familiar with standard HIV assays to measure things like viral load, infectivity, latency, neutralization, integration, and replication kinetics. - Strong in immunology and T cell biology. You know the immunology side as deeply as the virology. - Bench-first by design. You bring the rigor, the judgment, and the hands-on craft that turn experimental plans into real data. - Energized by the build. Standing up something from scratch is your idea of a great first year. You want ownership, responsibility, and direct proximity to the people setting direction. - Sharp at the bench. When an experiment isn't behaving, you can read what's happening, adjust on the fly, and bring real scientific thinking to the troubleshoot, not just rerun the protocol. Bonus points If you have any of these, great. None are required — we'll get you up to speed on whatever you need. - Hands-on experience with organoid or 3D culture systems - Experience with single-cell, multi-omic, or high-content imaging readouts - Background spanning HIV virology and broader infectious disease work - Comfort working alongside hardware engineers and platform scientists in a hands-on R&D environment Parallel Bio is building human-first drug discovery: 10x faster, 1000x cheaper, 0 animals killed. Parallel Bio is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive and respectful workplace. We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, or sexual orientation. ## About Parallel Bio ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Parallel Bio is a biotechnology company using a proprietary human immune organoid platform and AI to reimagine drug discovery, aiming to replace animal testing and predict human clinical outcomes from the start. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series A) - **Headquarters**: Watertown, Massachusetts, United States - **Founded**: 2021 - **Founders**: Robert DiFazio (Co-Founder & Co-CEO), Juliana Hilliard (Co-Founder & Co-CEO) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Biotechnology, Drug Discovery - **Target customers**: B2B; Fortune 500 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies seeking preclinical drug validation and discovery services. - **Mission or purpose**: To reimagine the entire drug discovery process from the ground up, creating a system that charts the map of human biology to go from disease target discovery to IND in a fraction of the time and cost, making drug development 10x faster and 1000x cheaper while eliminating animal testing. ## Products & Services - **Human Immune Organoid Platform**: The world’s first scalable human immune organoid designed to capture the human biology that animal models miss. It is a closed-loop, end-to-end automation system that generates compounding proprietary data on how therapies perform across diverse patient populations. - **Biological Atlas / Map of Human Biology**: A population-scale, perturbable, and fully human biological atlas built on data from a biobank of over 170 donors spanning different ages, sexes, ethnicities, and disease states. This platform enables disease target discovery, precision medicine, and patient stratification. - **Drug Discovery Services**: Partnering with pharmaceutical companies (including three Fortune 500 companies) to test compounds and predict clinical trial outcomes earlier and more reliably than existing preclinical models. Over 170 compounds have been tested to date. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available. - **Key Metric**: Total Funding of **$25.75M** across 4 rounds. - **Recent Funding**: **$21.0M Series A** (July 2025) led by AIX Ventures with 8 investors. - **Revenue**: Estimated annual revenue of **$3.2M** (LinkedIn estimate). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: AIX Ventures (Lead, Series A), Refactor (Lead, Seed Round). Advisors include Darrell Irvine (Professor, Scripps Research), Shane Crotty (Professor & CSO, La Jolla Institute), and Nima Aghaeepour (Professor, Stanford). - **Growth Signals**: 17.4% headcount growth YoY; presence in Austria alongside US HQ; LinkedIn follower growth of 129.2% yearly; active hiring across science, technology, and operations departments. ## Competitive Advantages - **Human-first biology**: A platform built entirely on human data, not animal models, which captures population diversity that clinical trials often fail to achieve. - **Proprietary data flywheel**: The closed-loop automation system generates a massive, proprietary dataset of human biological data, creating a compounding advantage for AI model training and discovery. - **Speed and cost**: Claims 10x faster and 1000x cheaper drug discovery compared to traditional methods, with a focus on reducing the 97.3% failure rate of clinical trials. - **Zero animal testing**: A strong ethical and scientific differentiator, appealing to modern regulatory and societal standards. ## Strategic Focus - **Platform scaling**: Expanding the biobank and automation capabilities to generate more data and improve the biological atlas. - **Commercial partnerships**: Deepening collaborations with large pharmaceutical companies (including three Fortune 500) to validate and scale the platform. - **Precision medicine**: Using the map of human biology to unlock personalized insights and patient stratification. - **AI and data**: Building foundation models on the growing dataset to further accelerate drug discovery and prediction. ## Why Work Here - **Mission-driven work**: Directly tackling the $2.6 billion, 12.5-year problem of drug discovery and aiming to eliminate animal testing, offering a chance to have a massive impact on human health. - **Interdisciplinary team**: Brings together experts in immunotherapy, data science, bioengineering, and drug discovery, fostering a collaborative environment. - **Culture**: Described as "a diverse, interdisciplinary team of dreamers and doers" looking for "fellow visionaries hungry for real impact." - **Work policy**: Most roles are **on-site in San Francisco, CA** (6 of 7 open positions), with one remote role available. The HQ is in Watertown, MA. - **Growth trajectory**: With recent Series A funding, rapid follower growth, and active hiring across multiple departments (Science, Technology, Operations), the company is in an aggressive growth phase. - **Open roles (7 total)**: Head of Platform, Head of Biology, Head of Sales, Data Application Engineer, Research Associate (Biobanking), Scientist (HIV Virology), and a general talent network application. ## Sources 1. [parallel.bio](https://www.parallel.bio/) 2. [parallel.bio/about](https://www.parallel.bio/about) 3. [parallel.bio/careers](https://www.parallel.bio/careers) 4. [LinkedIn - Parallel Bio](https://www.linkedin.com/company/parallelbio) 5. [Ashby Jobs - Parallel Bio](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/parallel-bio) ## Other roles at Parallel Bio - [Head of Platform Bioengineering & Assay Development](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-platform-bioengineering-assay-development-parallel-bio-san-francisco-yk79vhdd3jxe) — San Francisco, CA - [Research Associate, Biobanking](https://feeny.ai/job/research-associate-biobanking-parallel-bio-san-francisco-qk7fvtbs9w0w) — San Francisco, CA - [Join Our Talent Network Here](https://feeny.ai/job/join-our-talent-network-here-parallel-bio-remote-wkn5dbekzpbj)