Senior Laboratory Technician (Transformation) - Plant Biology Institute

Join us at EIT:

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society. Explore more at www.eit.org.

Welcome to the Plant Biology Institute:

The Plant Biology Institute, headed by Professor Steve Kelly, is a key part of the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) Oxford. The institute aims to develop impactful and commercially sustainable solutions for improving global food production and planetary health through pioneering plant science research.

The Plant Biology Institute will unite world-class researchers who are focused on expanding the frontiers of plant science. Our research is focused on enhancing our ability to feed the planet while simultaneously improving the climate and ecosystem outcomes of food production. By embedding cutting-edge plant science research within an organisation that is focused on solving global challenges at scale, we aim to accelerate the timeline from discovery to global impact.

Areas of exploration include:

• Improved plant productivity, both indoors and outside.
• Reduced reliance on inputs including water, fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides.
• Novel decarbonised plant-based production platforms for food and medicines.
• Advanced technologies that speed up discovery and deployment in plants. 

Researchers will have access to state-of-the-art laboratory and plant growth facilities and have opportunities to collaborate with experts at the forefront of research on AI, automation, and generative biology across the EIT ecosystem. They will also work with global leaders in market development, commercialisation, and impact creation. The Plant Biology Institute has long-term substantial funding to support the unique scale and ambition of its vision.

 

Your Role:

The Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) is seeking an experienced and curious Senior Lab Technician to join the Transformation team in the Plant Biology Institute (PBI).

The successful candidate will perform plant transformation and regeneration workflows, including optimising procedures and troubleshoot problems. They will work closely with a team of Transformation Scientists as well as scientists pursuing other research goals within PBI.

The ideal candidate will have both strong hands-on experience with transformation techniques, and solid theoretical foundations of related concepts. They will enjoy contributing to a variety of projects, and thrive in a fast moving, highly interdisciplinary environment.

 This role offers a unique opportunity to conduct high-impact research at the forefront of plant science while collaborating across multidisciplinary teams to drive innovation from lab to global impact.

Your Responsibilities:

• Independently execute plant transformation and regeneration workflows.
• Optimise tissue culture and transformation protocols across crops and genotypes.
• Lead troubleshooting of regeneration failures and contamination issues.
• Track and analyse transformation efficiency and pipeline performance.
• Train and mentor junior technicians.
• Maintain high standards of documentation, data quality, and reproducibility.
• Support scaling efforts, including parallelisation and workflow optimisation.
• Interface with scientists on experimental design and prioritisation.

Essential Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• BSc/MSc (or equivalent experience) in plant science, biotechnology, or related field.
• Extensive hands-on experience in plant tissue culture and regeneration.
• Proven experience with Agrobacterium-mediated transformation.
• Strong understanding of selection systems and markers.
• Experience with structured data tracking (spreadsheets, LIMS-style systems).
• Ability to diagnose biological vs technical failure modes.
• Excellent laboratory organisation and sterile technique.
• Experience with QMS.

Desirable Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• Experience with multiple crops (monocots and/or dicots).
• Familiarity with CRISPR/Cas-based genome editing workflows.
• Experience supporting high-throughput or scaled transformation pipelines.
• Exposure to automation or semi-automated lab workflows.

Our Benefits:

• Salary dependent on experience + travel allowance + bonus

• Enhanced holiday. Our annual leave allowance is 25 days plus 8 bank holidays and an additional 3 days between Christmas and New Year. You will also have the opportunity to purchase an additional 5 days annual leave in January and July.
• Pension - Employer contribution 7.5%, minimum employee contribution 5%
• Life Assurance.
• Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance as standard for you, your partner and any dependents. Including hospital Cash Plan
• Employee discounts
• Electric car scheme
• Nursery Salary Sacrifice scheme
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Family Planning
• Neurodiversity support including advise and assessments
• Coaching & Therapy services

 

Working Together – What It Involves:

• You must be eligible to work in the UK with a willingness to travel as necessary. 
• You must be based in, or within easy commuting distance of, Oxford. 
• During peak periods, some longer hours may be required and some working across multiple time zones due to the global nature of the programme.