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 has world-class scientists designing novel mRNA vaccines using computational protein design. We have a GMP-capable manufacturing facility producing clinical doses. We have machine learning engineers, robotic arms, and six vaccine candidates in the pipeline. We have funding from the Gates Foundation and the US government's BARDA. We have a mission to save a million lives.
What we also have is a facility. It's called the RNA Foundry — PopVax's integrated R&D and GMP-capable clinical dose production facility in Hyderabad, fully equipped to advance novel RNA medicines from concept to clinic in months, not years. It houses our molecular biology, cell biology, and immunology labs, our lipid synthesis and LNP formulation capabilities, our analytical testing and QC labs, and our GMP production line that goes from plasmid all the way to finished mRNA-LNP product. And the RNA Foundry needs to work.
Not "work" in the abstract, keep-the-office-comfortable sense. Work in the sense that the medicines we produce here will go into human beings. If the facility malfunctions in a way that compromises the integrity of a manufacturing run, a contaminated or degraded product could endanger a patient's life. If a power failure or cooling system breakdown destroys a batch of clinical material, a trial gets delayed by months — months during which people who might have received a lifesaving vaccine do not. The RNA Foundry is not an office building with labs in it. It is the physical infrastructure on which the safety of patients and the pace of life-saving medicine depends.
This is the job that nobody talks about at biotech conferences. Nobody writes breathless articles about the person who keeps the DG sets running, the AHUs calibrated, the water systems clean, the waste handled properly, and the pest control on schedule. But when any one of those things fails, the consequences are not inconvenience — they are lost experiments, lost batches, lost time, and in the worst case, compromised patient safety. The experiments and the manufacturing process don't care why the infrastructure failed. They just fail.
PopVax is a company that moves at extraordinary speed across R&D, manufacturing, and clinical development. That speed is only possible if the physical plant underneath it all is rock-solid, clean, safe, and compliant — every day, without exception. We need someone who owns that. Not someone who manages it from a desk and delegates everything. Someone who walks the site, knows every system, leads their team from the front, and takes it personally when something breaks — because at this company, when something breaks, it's not just an operational problem. It's a problem that can cost lives.
That someone is our Facility Manager.
What You'll Actually Do
You will own all facility operations and engineering functions across the RNA Foundry. Every system that keeps the lights on, the air clean, the water flowing, the waste handled, and the labs and manufacturing areas operational — that's yours. You'll lead a team of engineers and housekeeping staff directly, and you'll be the person the entire company relies on to ensure the facility is maintained in a condition that a GMP auditor, a safety inspector, or a very demanding scientist would all be satisfied with.
This is a role that spans two domains that are often separated in larger organisations but are inseparable here: facility management and engineering operations. You need to be as comfortable discussing housekeeping standards and pest control schedules as you are troubleshooting a UPS failure or planning a preventive maintenance programme for the HVAC system. At PopVax, these are not two jobs. They are one job, and it's yours.
Specifically, you will:
Keep the facility clean, safe, and functional at all times. This is the baseline, and it's non-negotiable. You'll oversee housekeeping services across office, lab, utility, storage, and common areas. You'll manage biomedical and liquid waste handling in line with all applicable safety, environmental, and regulatory requirements. You'll coordinate pest control. You'll monitor the general upkeep of the entire facility — infrastructure, equipment, water systems, civil works, everything. When something breaks, you'll ensure it gets fixed fast. When something is about to break, you'll have caught it already.
Lead the engineering team. You'll directly manage a team of engineers, assigning responsibilities, monitoring performance, building their skills, and fostering a culture of ownership and operational discipline. This is not a team that waits for tickets. This is a team that walks the site, knows the systems, and takes pride in uptime.
Own preventive and corrective maintenance across all site assets. You'll plan and execute a robust maintenance programme covering every critical system on the site — power systems (DG sets, UPS, power distribution), HVAC (AHUs, ductwork, outdoor AC units), water systems (pipelines, storage tanks, treatment, distribution), process and utility assets, and waste and environmental systems (liquid waste tanks, transfer lines, scrubbers, exhaust). You'll conduct or supervise routine inspections, condition monitoring, and performance checks. You'll maintain comprehensive maintenance schedules, engineering logs, checklists, SOPs, and asset records. The goal is to actively minimise downtime, not reactively respond to it — because in a facility that produces medicines for human use, downtime is not a scheduling inconvenience. It can mean a delayed trial, a lost batch, or a compromised product.
Manage vendors and ensure compliance. You'll manage third-party service vendors for housekeeping, waste disposal, pest control, AMC services, civil works, utility maintenance, and related activities. You'll track their performance, service quality, and compliance with contract deliverables — because a vendor who shows up late or does sloppy work is your problem, not theirs. You'll ensure all statutory, environmental, and facility-related compliance requirements are met and documented, and you'll support internal and external audits and regulatory inspections.
Coordinate across the organisation. You'll work cross-functionally with lab and GMP operations, admin, procurement, and leadership to prioritise and execute facility requirements. When the R&D team needs a new lab space configured, when manufacturing needs a utility connection modified, when the company is expanding and the layout needs to change — you'll be the person who makes the physical infrastructure keep up with the pace of the science. You'll support space planning, site readiness, and infrastructure changes as the organisation evolves.
Build systems for continuous improvement. Escalation management, preventive action tracking, maintenance dashboards — you'll build the systems that make facility operations legible and improvable, not just survivable. The goal isn't just to keep things from falling apart. It's to make the RNA Foundry operate so well that the scientists and engineers who work here barely have to think about it — so they can focus entirely on the work that gets medicines to the people who need them.
Who You Are
You're someone who takes genuine pride in a well-run facility. Not because you love paperwork and checklists — though you'll maintain both — but because you understand that every piece of infrastructure you maintain is the foundation that a hundred people depend on to do their work, and that the work they do saves lives. When the power stays on, the air stays clean, the water stays flowing, and the waste gets handled properly, you don't get thanked. But you know what it means, and that's enough.
You're hands-on. You've worked directly with DG sets, UPS systems, AHUs, compressed air systems, water treatment systems, gas cylinder systems, and liquid waste infrastructure — not just managed people who work on them. You can troubleshoot system-level issues across power, water, air, and exhaust distribution. You understand how these systems interact, and when one of them misbehaves, you can trace the problem upstream.
You lead from the front. Your team respects you because you know the systems as well as they do, you're on the floor when it matters, and you hold everyone — including yourself — to a high standard. You build a culture of discipline and responsiveness, not through authority, but through example.
Qualifications
Bachelor's degree or diploma in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Civil Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
Minimum 5 years of relevant experience in facility management and engineering operations.
Demonstrated experience directly managing engineering teams, service vendors, and day-to-day facility operations.
Hands-on working knowledge of DG sets, UPS systems, AHUs, compressed air systems, water systems, outdoor AC units, gas cylinder systems, and liquid waste infrastructure.
Strong understanding of power, water, air, and exhaust distribution systems and the ability to troubleshoot system-level issues across them.
Practical familiarity with housekeeping management, biomedical waste handling, liquid waste management, and pest control operations.
Ability to build and maintain preventive maintenance schedules, SOPs, and engineering records.
Awareness of applicable statutory, environmental, and compliance requirements relevant to facility and utility operations.
Preferred (but not required)
Prior experience in biotech, pharma, healthcare, manufacturing, laboratory, food processing, or other regulated environments.
Experience supporting GMP or R&D facility operations.
Experience managing site expansion, modification, or infrastructure improvement projects.
Reporting Structure
You'll report to the VP of Operations and work closely with every team at the RNA Foundry — R&D, GMP manufacturing, QA, procurement, and administration. This is not a role that operates in the background. When the facility works, the science works. When the facility doesn't work, nothing works — and at PopVax, "nothing works" doesn't just mean lost productivity. It means lost time on medicines that people are waiting for. You are the person who makes sure that doesn't happen.