PopVax is an Indian full-stack biotech building first-in-class and best-in-class vaccines and cancer immunotherapies using machine learning-driven protein 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, Strep A, and adult pulmonary TB; broadly-protective best-in-class vaccines against COVID-19, influenza, malaria, and HPV; and precision immunotherapies against hard-to-treat solid tumours such as liver cancer and pancreatic cancer. Beyond existing diseases, we are leveraging our high-speed platform to build rapid-response biosecurity capabilities against engineered de novo pathogens.

Our mission is funded by Vitalik Buterin’s Balvi Fund, the Gates Foundation, the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), Renaissance Philanthropy, and Good Ventures, with individual investments from Enveda founder Viswa Colluru and Tesla self-driving AI pioneer Dhaval Shroff. Our first program, an open-source broadly-protective COVID-19 vaccine, will begin a Phase I clinical trial in Australia in mid-2026. This is just the start – we intend to advance 6+ novel vaccine and immunotherapy programs into human clinical trials over the next three years, decisively demonstrating that world-class biotech R&D is possible in India. 

No matter the job title, each person’s role at PopVax is ultimately about helping bring safe, effective new medicines that represent a step-change over the current standard-of-care to the people who need them, as quickly as possible. If you are looking for a place 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!

Role Overview

PopVax is an Indian full-stack mRNA biotech company. When we say "full-stack," we mean it — we don't just design vaccines using computational protein design and then hand them off to a contract manufacturer. We make them ourselves, in our own facility, with our own team. Our GMP production line at the RNA Foundry in Hyderabad goes from plasmid DNA all the way to finished mRNA-LNP product, including the synthesis of our proprietary ionizable lipids. Our first vaccine candidate — a computationally designed, broadly-protective COVID-19 booster — is headed to a Phase I human trial in Australia. Five more programs are behind it. We intend to be running multiple clinical trials simultaneously within the next few years.

And then it gets harder.

We don't just want to manufacture vaccines for large clinical trials. We want to manufacture personalised mRNA vaccines and immunotherapies — n=1 products, designed for individual patients, going from sequencing to dose in vial in weeks. If you know anything about GMP manufacturing, you know how difficult that is. The construct changes every time. The process has to be robust enough to handle that variability while maintaining the same uncompromising quality standards for every single patient's dose. Nobody said this would be easy. We believe it's achievable.

But all of this — the multi-program pipeline, the rapid clinical timelines, the personalised medicines — requires a manufacturing operation that is simultaneously rigorous and fast, disciplined and adaptable, audit-ready and innovation-friendly. Building that is the challenge.

Let's be direct about what's at stake. The products that come out of this facility will go into human beings. Every batch of mRNA, every LNP formulation, every vial that leaves the RNA Foundry must meet the highest standards of safety, purity, and potency — not because a regulator demands it, though they do, but because a person's life depends on it. A manufacturing deviation that isn't caught doesn't just generate a CAPA. It can harm a patient. A contaminated batch doesn't just cost money. It can end a clinical program and, in the worst case, endanger the people the program was designed to save.

We need someone who understands this in their bones. Someone who can build and lead a GMP manufacturing operation that is rigorous enough to satisfy any regulator on earth, fast enough to keep pace with PopVax's aggressive clinical timeline, and adaptable enough to handle a rapidly changing pipeline where the nature of the constructs shifts constantly. Someone who lives at the intersection of science, engineering, and quality — and who refuses to compromise on any of the three.

That someone is our VP of GMP Manufacturing.

What You'll Actually Do

You will own end-to-end GMP manufacturing at PopVax. Not a piece of it. All of it — from pDNA template production through in vitro transcription through LNP encapsulation through fill-finish. You will lead the team, the process, the facility, and the systems. You will be the person who is ultimately responsible for ensuring that every batch that leaves the RNA Foundry is safe, effective, and produced in full compliance with cGMP standards.

Here's what makes this particularly challenging — and particularly interesting. PopVax does not have a dedicated MSAT team sitting between R&D and manufacturing. There is no intermediate layer that takes a bench-scale process, optimises it over eighteen months, and hands you a tidy tech transfer package. Instead, R&D, analytical sciences, GMP, and QC work together in very close proximity — physically and organisationally — to translate processes "through the glass" from the bench into the GMP facility at very high speed. The nature of the constructs changes rapidly as the science evolves. New sequences, new formulations, new targets. Your manufacturing operation has to absorb that pace of change without ever letting quality slip.

This means you won't just be running a production line. You'll be building a manufacturing system that is fundamentally designed for speed and adaptability — one that can take a new construct from the R&D team and get it into GMP production fast, while maintaining every control, every record, and every quality standard that cGMP requires. And when we start producing personalised n=1 medicines, that system will need to handle a different product for every patient, at clinical grade, on a timeline measured in weeks from sequencing to vial.

Specifically, you will:

• Lead end-to-end production. Oversee the entire manufacturing process: pDNA template production, in vitro transcription (IVT), mRNA purification, LNP encapsulation, and all associated process steps. You'll ensure that every stage is executed according to validated procedures, within specification, and with full traceability. When something goes wrong — and in manufacturing, something always eventually goes wrong — you'll lead the investigation, identify the root cause, and make sure it doesn't happen again.

• Own the translation from bench to GMP. Without a dedicated MSAT function, you will be the senior manufacturing leader responsible for working directly with R&D and analytical sciences to take processes from the bench into GMP production. You'll need to build the frameworks, the documentation practices, and the cross-functional habits that make this translation fast and reliable — even when the constructs are changing rapidly and the timelines are aggressive. This is perhaps the most distinctive and difficult aspect of this role, and it's what will separate a good hire from a great one.

• Build and maintain GMP documentation systems. Batch manufacturing records, SOPs, logbooks, deviation reports, CAPA workflows, change control documentation — the entire paper trail that makes GMP manufacturing auditable and trustworthy. You'll build and maintain these systems with the rigour and discipline that ensures data integrity and inspection readiness at all times. Not "we'll clean it up before the audit" readiness. Actual readiness, every day.

• Maintain an audit-ready state at all times. You will ensure strict adherence to global cGMP standards, working hand-in-hand with QA and QC. The standard is not "good enough to pass." The standard is that an inspector could walk through the facility on any given Tuesday and find everything in order — because it always is.

• Lead facility and capacity expansion. As PopVax's pipeline grows, so must its manufacturing capacity. You'll lead the strategy for scaling our facility footprint, overseeing the implementation of cleanroom technologies and single-use systems to increase throughput — including the capacity to produce personalised n=1 medicines at clinical grade, which will require rethinking traditional batch-based manufacturing workflows entirely.

• Manage supply chain resilience. mRNA manufacturing depends on critical, long-lead raw materials — specialty lipids, enzymes, nucleotides, and other reagents that can't be sourced overnight. You'll manage procurement to ensure zero downtime in production schedules, building the supplier relationships and inventory strategies that keep the line running even when global supply chains do what global supply chains do.

• Drive rational digitisation. Real-time process analytical technology (PAT), electronic batch records, predictive maintenance for critical systems — you'll drive the adoption of digital tools that make the manufacturing operation more visible, more controllable, and more efficient. Not digitisation for its own sake, but digitisation that actually improves the quality and speed of production — particularly as we move toward personalised medicines where the turnaround time from sequence to dose leaves no room for manual bottlenecks.

Who You Are

You've spent years in biopharmaceutical manufacturing and you know what good looks like — not theoretically, but operationally. You've led production teams through successful audits, through technical deviations, through supply chain shocks, and through the particular pressure that comes with knowing the product you're making will go into a human being's arm. You handle these situations with a calm, analytical approach, because you've learned that panic is the enemy of good manufacturing.

You live at the intersection of science, engineering, and quality. You understand the biology well enough to know why a process parameter matters, the engineering well enough to know how to control it, and the regulatory landscape well enough to know what the documentation needs to look like. You don't see quality and speed as being in tension — you see quality as what makes speed possible, because a batch that fails release or triggers a deviation costs far more time than doing it right the first time.

You're comfortable working without the buffer of a dedicated MSAT team. You know how to work directly with R&D scientists, speak their language, understand their processes, and translate what's happening on the bench into something that can be manufactured at GMP grade — quickly, repeatedly, and safely. You thrive in environments where the constructs change often and the timelines are tight, because you've built (or wish you could build) manufacturing systems designed for exactly that kind of adaptability.

You lead through technical credibility and operational discipline. Your team trusts you because you understand their work at a deep level, you hold a high standard without being unreasonable, and you fight for the resources and systems they need to do their jobs properly. You're as comfortable on the production floor troubleshooting a formulation issue as you are in the boardroom presenting a capacity expansion plan.

You communicate clearly — in writing and in person — and you can translate highly technical manufacturing concepts into language that leadership, regulators, and cross-functional partners can understand without losing precision.

Qualifications

• Master's or PhD in Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, or a related field.

• 6+ years of experience in biopharmaceutical manufacturing, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role specifically within biologics, cell and gene therapy (CGT), or vaccine production.

• Deep hands-on knowledge of mRNA and/or LNP manufacturing processes is strongly preferred.

• Demonstrated experience building and maintaining GMP documentation systems, managing regulatory inspections, and maintaining audit-ready operations.

• Proven ability to lead through technical deviations, process failures, and supply chain disruptions with composure and rigour.

• Strong command of English, with the ability to communicate highly technical concepts in both verbal and written form.

Preferred (but not required)

• Experience with mRNA-LNP manufacturing specifically — IVT, purification, LNP encapsulation, fill-finish.

• Experience with rapid process transfer from R&D to GMP in environments without a dedicated MSAT function.

• Experience with or strong interest in personalised medicine manufacturing (n=1 or small-batch production at clinical grade).

• Experience managing facility expansion and capacity scale-up in a GMP environment.

• Experience with process analytical technology (PAT) and digital manufacturing tools.

• Experience in a startup or high-growth biotech environment where the manufacturing operation was being built and scaled simultaneously.

Reporting Structure

You'll report to the CEO and work closely with the VP of Programs, the Head of QA, the Head of QC, the analytical sciences team, and the R&D leadership. This is one of the most critical roles in the company. The vaccines and therapeutics that PopVax designs and develops are only as real as the manufacturing operation's ability to produce them — safely, at quality, and on time. Every batch that leaves the RNA Foundry with your team's name on it is a promise to a patient that the product inside is safe and effective. This role exists to make sure that promise is kept.