Operator-in-Residence (OIR): BioTech
About Primary
Primary is a seed-stage venture capital firm dedicated to building transformational businesses alongside exceptional founders and entrepreneurs. By pairing meaningful, long-term investment with the largest portfolio impact team of any seed investor, our portfolio companies have reached an industry-best seed-to-A graduation rate.
The firm’s Incubation arm, Primary Labs, launched in 2019 to lead the ideation, research and launch of entirely new, transformational companies. Primary’s first three incubated companies will return its inaugural fund many times over, and Primary is now primed for substantial growth in its company-building efforts.
About the Role
Primary Labs is seeking a Biotechnology Operator-in-Residence (OIR) to join the program to ideate, launch and build enduring companies at the intersection of biology, artificial intelligence and data infrastructure. In this role, you will work alongside our Incubation Venture Partner, Kieran Chacko, Ph.D. to build companies designed to transform biotechnology into a core operating system for healthcare, enabling biological insights to move reliably, continuously and at scale from research to patient care.
Our approach is deeply hands-on, hypothesis-driven and team-first. We form clear points of view about the future biological capabilities and system-level changes required to materially improve patient outcomes. We conceive and pressure test ideas through engagement with scientists, clinicians, and industry operators, using real-world feedback to sharpen both problem and solution. We build early technical, experimental and platform prototypes to interrogate core assumptions. We work as a team, owning work end-to-end from first signal, through clear conviction, to company formation and growth.
We are looking for builders who think scientifically, not merely analytically, and thrive in ambiguity; people who are comfortable forming and testing hypotheses, designing experiments that span biological systems, data, and real-world workflows, and revising beliefs as evidence accumulates. You want to build companies that have a lasting, positive impact on human health and genuinely improve outcomes for patients.
This role is based in either Boston or New York City.
What You’ll Do
Collaborate with the Primary Labs team to ideate, develop, and rigorously test new biotechnology company ideas.
Conduct deep scientific, technical, and market investigation to identify high-conviction problems worth building around.
Engage directly with key opinion leaders (KOLs), academic researchers, clinicians, and industry experts to validate unmet needs and emerging opportunities.
Build early technical prototypes, computational workflows, or experimental roadmaps to validate core scientific and product assumptions.
Develop early business models and go-to-market strategies appropriate for novel biotech platforms.
Create investor-facing materials grounded in scientific credibility and clear strategic insight to support early company formation and fundraising.
Join a company at launch as a founding team member, helping to secure early traction, shape strategy, and build the initial team.
About You
Scientific Builder: You approach problems with a scientific mindset—forming hypotheses, designing experiments, and learning from real-world signals. You are energized by uncertainty and motivated to turn ambiguity into insight.
Applied ML Experience: You have hands-on experience applying machine learning in real-world or clinical contexts, particularly within biological or biomedical domains.
Early-Stage Operator: You’ve executed in early-stage environments, such as startups, biotech incubators, or venture-backed research programs, and are comfortable owning work end-to-end.
Credible & Professional: You bring the judgment, rigor, and professionalism required to engage deeply with KOLs and build trusted, long-term relationships across academia and industry.
Clear Communicator: You can translate complex scientific and technical concepts for non-technical audiences while maintaining precision and credibility.
Entrepreneurial: You thrive in ambiguity, take initiative without predefined playbooks, and are excited by building something new rather than optimizing something established.
Integrated Thinker: You believe science, computation, and business must connect continuously, and you work naturally across all three.