Supply Chain & Procurement Manager

Job description

Adaptyv is building an automated lab that lets AI agents run biology experiments. We're entering the era of agentic science where AI models can now design novel proteins, propose hypotheses, and iterate on experimental results. But they can't run the experiments themselves - that's still a manual, months-long process. We're building the infrastructure that gives AI agents access to the physical world. We are one of the fastest growing biotech companies, trusted by leading biopharmas, frontier AI labs, and the techbio companies pushing the field forward. This is a rare chance to help advance some of the most important work happening in biotech today. Our automated lab is powered by a deep software + hardware stack: lab instruments worth millions of USD reverse-engineered into API-controllable hardware, dozens of devices orchestrated through complex workflows, full observability on everything that happens in the lab, processing pipelines for messy physical-world data, and AI systems that troubleshoot production results and accelerate assay development. We’re growing rapidly and are hiring for talented people to scale and support the massive demand for AI-driven wet lab experimentation. ABOUT THE ROLE Our lab is a factory. DNA goes in, characterized proteins come out, and a customer gets results in days rather than the months a CRO would take. Everything that machine consumes — synthesized genes, reagents, consumables, biosensors, catalog proteins — is something we buy, on lead times we do not control. It is also most of what a protein costs to make, which makes procurement one of the biggest levers on gross margin in the business. So far scientists have bought what they need, decisions get made in hours, and nothing blocks an experiment. That was the right trade while we were proving the thing works. But we are multiplying lab throughput several times over, and at that volume procurement becomes a discipline: real terms with the suppliers we already buy from heavily, qualified second sources where we currently have one, inventory that is planned rather than remembered. Nobody has taken that on yet. You would be our first dedicated supply chain hire, and it is hands-on — you do the sourcing and the negotiating yourself. One thing makes it harder than a typical procurement job: our assay portfolio keeps expanding, and every new assay brings new reagents. You are not optimizing a static supply chain, you are building one that flexes with the science. How far the role goes from there is up to you. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own procurement end to end. Every input to the lab, from gene synthesis down to gloves. Requests, POs, receiving, vendor onboarding, the lot. - De-risk the supply chain. Too much of what we depend on has exactly one supplier. Find second sources, qualify them properly with the science team, and keep them warm, so that switching is a decision we make rather than an emergency we react to. - Negotiate. Build the supplier relationships across our DNA, reagent, biosensor and catalog-protein vendors, put volume commitments and pricing agreements in place, and go get the margin back. - Drive down the cost of a protein. Go category by category and take cost out of each. A few francs per protein, multiplied across the volumes we are heading toward, is a seven-figure line. - Stay ahead of the science. When R&D says they are adding a new assay next quarter, you should already be sourcing the reagents for it. - Set inventory policy, and make the numbers true. Reorder points and safety stock, so we never stall a customer experiment on a stockout and never have six figures of reagents quietly expiring in a freezer. You decide what should be on the shelves and how much of it. - Plan supply for the lab expansion. Model what several-fold throughput actually needs — volumes, lead times, storage, cash tied up in stock — and have it in place before the capacity comes online, not after. - Own landed cost. Shipping, customs, import duties, VAT recoverability, cold chain. We import a lot of biology into Switzerland and both the cost and the failure modes matter. - Own COGS with Finance. Procurement and finance are the two halves of gross margin, and you are the procurement half. - Automate the whole thing. Ordering, tracking, and reconciliation should mostly run themselves. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - You have worked in supply chain or procurement in a physical, technical business. Biotech, a CRO, or another life science company is ideal, and you understand reagent categories — enzymes, antibodies, media, resins, plasticware — and how they are actually sourced. Hardware manufacturing or another high-mix production setting translates well. Buying software licences does not. You do not need to have run a supply chain organization before; you do need to be ready to own one. - You think in margins. Saving a few francs per protein across tens of thousands of proteins a month is a number that should make you sit up. - You are technical enough to talk to scientists. You do not need a degree in biology, but you will be qualifying an alternative supplier for a reagent that a protein biochemist depends on, and you need to be able to have that conversation properly rather than forwarding it. - You can negotiate. Comfortable sitting across from vendors who have been selling into labs for thirty years, and comfortable walking away. - You automate. We run on Claude Code across the company and our lab system has an API. Some of our largest suppliers still require a human to upload a spreadsheet to a portal, and we consider that a bug rather than a fact of life. The best version of this person is writing scripts against our systems and our vendors' systems, not clicking through them. If your instinct is that procurement is a portal-and-email job, we will frustrate each other. - Obsessive about the details that bite. Lead times, expiry dates, lot numbers, minimum order quantities. Nothing falls through. - You want to grow fast. We are going from roughly 25 people to roughly 50 in the next year, and the lab spend grows faster than the headcount does. - Swiss or EU import/export experience is a strong plus. SCOPE We are a small company and nobody here has clean edges around their job. You will end up in the lab, in a spreadsheet with Finance, on the phone with a courier, and every so often doing something that is nobody's job simply because it needs doing. That is the deal, and if it sounds unappealing then we are probably not the right place. What we do want to be clear about is where the centre of gravity is. This role is about what we buy, who we buy it from, what we pay, and how reliably it turns up. Sourcing, negotiation, supplier relationships, inventory, resilience, cost. Plenty of other things will land on your desk and you should take them, but that is the part that is yours and the part we will judge the role on. One thing it is not: an order-taking job. You are not a mailbox between scientists and vendors. You decide what we source and from whom, and we expect you to argue with us about it. WHY THIS ROLE IS INTERESTING Most supply chain jobs are about keeping a stable system stable. This one is about building the supply chain for a lab that is about to grow several-fold, at a company where the cost and reliability of an experiment more or less is the product. Every franc you take out of the cost of a protein, and every week you take out of a lead time, shows up directly in what we can offer customers and in whether AI-designed biology is cheap enough to be worth doing at scale. There are not many procurement jobs where the leverage is that direct, or that visible to the people running the company. Application deadline We are reviewing applicants on a rolling basis.