PopVax is an Indian full-stack biotech building first-in-class and best-in-class vaccines and cancer immunotherapies using machine learning-driven design and relentless empiricism. We design, develop, and manufacture our own RNA medicines end-to-end because we believe great pharmaceutical science can only flourish in tight feedback loops that iterate rapidly. PopVax’s experimental work and clinical dose production is based at the RNA Foundry, our integrated R&D and GMP-capable clinical dose production facility in Hyderabad.

PopVax's north star is our goal of developing novel vaccines and therapeutics over the next decade with the cumulative ability to save 1 million lives each year – the Million Lives Mission. To that end, we are developing first-in-class vaccines against Hepatitis C Virus, Strep A, and adult pulmonary TB, broadly-protective best-in-class vaccines against COVID-19, influenza, and HPV, and precision immunotherapies against hard-to-treat solid tumours such as liver cancer and pancreatic cancer.

Our work is funded by Vitalik Buterin’s Balvi Fund, the Gates Foundation, the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and Renaissance Philanthropy. Our first vaccine program will begin a Phase I clinical trial in the US in mid-2026 conducted & sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). We intend to put 6 novel vaccines and immunotherapies into Phase I clinical trials over the next 3 years.

No matter the job title, each person’s role at PopVax is ultimately focused on helping take safe & effective new medicines that represent a step-change improvement on the current standard-of-care to the people who need them as fast as possible. If you want to work where the ambition is high, the learning curve is steep, and the work matters to billions, you’ll feel at home here.

If you’re excited by the idea of advancing scientific, clinical, and regulatory frontiers of vaccines and immunotherapies, spending each day developing medicines with the potential to save millions of lives, and building a generational global pharmaceutical company in India along the way – join us!

We are seeking an Applied Statistician to join our team in Hyderabad (note: in-person only, we do not offer remote work) to play a key role across our programs.

Responsibilities will include:

• Collating and processing diverse, unstructured biological and chemical data produced by PopVax’s scientific teams on a daily basis

• Performing basic statistical analyses such as t-tests, ANOVA, Pearson and Spearman correlations, and generating brief markdown reports 

• Producing data visualisations to fit specific requests 

• Liaising with PopVax’s scientific teams to improve and optimise data reporting methods and formats

The ideal candidate will have:

• Thorough theoretical understanding of Probability and Statistics

• A degree in Statistics, Data Science, Applied Mathematics or a similar quantitative field

• Excellent proficiency with R or Python

• Familiarity using R packages such as dplyr, ggplot2 and shiny or Python packages such as pandas, scipy, matplotlib, seaborn and plotly

• At least 2 years of experience with data processing and visualisation

• A demonstrated ability to produce clean data reports and visualisations especially using markdown-based tools like Rmd and Quarto

• A willingness to handle relatively large volumes of unstructured and poorly annotated data, working quickly on often-tight deadlines

• Basic understanding of machine learning techniques such as regression, decision trees, clustering and dimensionality reduction

We offer very competitive compensation, comprehensive health insurance covering immediate family (including pre-existing conditions), and, most importantly, a collaborative work environment focused on solving the cutting-edge multidisciplinary challenges of our novel mRNA platform.