Fermentation Scientist/Engineer

Written By Joe Bailey

The Clean Food Group is a highly innovative, purpose-driven start-up at the leading edge of developing novel foods from precision fermentation, addressing deforestation and climate change. By producing food ingredients from fermentation, rather than animals and tropical oils, we are helping build a world where tasty, sustainable, nutritious foods can be produced with minimal impact on the global environment.

Our first product is a sustainable alternative to palm oil, a widely used but controversial ingredient that is present in more than 50% of products on supermarket shelves, across numerous consumer categories. Our alternative, CLEAN Oil TM , creates 90% fewer greenhouse gases than standard palm oil.

We are looking for a talented Fermentation Scientist/Engineer to join our highly skilled and experienced manufacturing and scale up team to help scale-up fermentations at our demonstration plant in Ledbury, Herefordshire.

The role is based on site at our demonstration plant in Ledbury, Herefordshire.

Your role

You will be responsible for:

  • Safely, reliably, and sustainably running both upstream and downstream processes of the demonstration plant

  • Operating a variety of production equipment, including up to 6,000L capacity vessels, with ancillary equipment

  • Optimising fermentation process for yield improvements in biomass and oil productivities

  • Executing and monitoring fermentation and downstream processing with thorough detail.

  • Routine analytical testing to ensure product quality and yield to meet specifications.

  • Preparing fermentation media and fermenters plus calibrating instrumentation.

  • Working to establish integrated workflows and solutions, building out the company’s corecapabilities by introducing new technologies, identify technology bottlenecks and driving for their resolution

  • Collaborating with adjacent teams, including strain engineering, downstream processing and analytics.

The person we are looking for

We are looking for a self-motivated and creative team player who is passionate about sustainability, bioprocessing, (bio) chemical engineering and scale up and wants to make a positive impact in the world. You should be organised, have a strong work ethic and show a creative and methodical approach to problem solving. You will be joining a highly skilled team made up of experienced fermentation and bioprocessing scientists and chemical engineers.

You should have:

  • 3+ years experience working in biochemical engineering and bioprocessing at various scales from 2L up to manufacturing scale

  • Good knowledge of safety and working in a safe manner through risk assessments

  • Good knowledge of GMP and food safety

  • Ideally a Masters or PHD in biology, biotechnology, biochemistry, bioprocessing or a similar relevant area.

  • Broad knowledge of microbiology, particularly in yeast

  • Ability to work in a dynamic, multidisciplinary team

  • Excellent problem solving, verbal communications skills

  • Effective data management, understanding of workflows and detailed reporting are a pre-requisite for success.

What we offer

  • Competitive salary (depending on experience).

  • This is a full-time position based onsite in Ledbury, Herefordshire.

  • Opportunities for personal and professional training and development is a core value for the business and creating a world class piloting team.

  • We are dedicated to providing an equal, supportive and inclusive culture and embrace a diverse mix of talent to contribute to that. Therefore, we welcome all applications - regardless of gender (including gender reassignment), sex or sexual orientation, race (including colour, nationality and ethnic or national origin), religion/belief, disability or age.

If you are interested in joining our team, please email your CV to alex@cleanfood.group and tell us in a short statement (text or video or audio) why you are the right person for the Clean Food Group.

Joe Bailey