Research Scientist – Gut Health & Clinical Research
The Role
The Research Scientist is responsible for building the scientific foundation that differentiates our gut health portfolio through innovative research and evidence-based product development. This role designs, manages, and executes preclinical and clinical research to generate robust scientific substantiation, support regulatory-compliant structure/function claims, and advance a pipeline of science-based initiatives.
Working closely with Product Development, Regulatory, Marketing, Product Education, and Quality, this scientist translates complex microbiome science into compelling, consumer-relevant product benefits that are easily understood.
Employee Value Proposition
This is a unique opportunity to own the scientific direction of research initiatives—from identifying emerging ingredient opportunities to designing studies, generating evidence, and influencing product strategy. Backed by executive support, you'll have the autonomy to shape research programs, contribute to first-to-market innovations, and build the scientific credibility that differentiates our products and empowers our field.
Key Performance Objectives
- Lead and complete 1–3 priority preclinical studies supporting upcoming product launches and patent opportunities.
- Strengthen scientific substantiation by developing differentiated, regulatory-compliant structure/function claims.
- Advance innovation by identifying and evaluating emerging gut health ingredients, technologies, and research opportunities.
- Partner with Marketing and Product Education to translate science into compelling product stories and field education.
- Support innovation and renovation initiatives that strengthen the company's long-term gut health portfolio.
Performance Accountabilities
Scientific Research & Innovation
- Design, manage, and execute preclinical and clinical research programs in partnership with internal teams and Contract Research Organizations (CROs).
- Critically evaluate emerging science, patents, and competitive technologies to identify innovation opportunities.
- Develop research strategies that support a 3–5 year gut health innovation pipeline.
Scientific Substantiation
- Develop defensible scientific substantiation for structure/function claims through literature evaluation, research findings, and clinical evidence.
- Author scientific dossiers, white papers, technical summaries, and ingredient substantiation documents.
- Translate microbiome science into differentiated product positioning across digestive health, immune health, metabolic health, and the gut-brain axis.
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Collaborate with Regulatory, Marketing, Product Development, Product Education, Quality, and Legal to ensure scientific accuracy and compliance.
- Develop educational content and scientific training that equips internal teams and the field with evidence-based product knowledge.
- Provide scientific leadership throughout product development and commercialization.
External Scientific Engagement
- Build relationships with CROs, academic researchers, Scientific Advisory Boards, and industry partners.
- Attend scientific conferences and evaluate emerging research, ingredient technologies, and partnership opportunities.
- Support Quality with scientific evaluation of Serious Adverse Event reports when needed.
Performance Qualifications
Required
- PhD in Microbiology, Nutrition Science, Biochemistry, or a related scientific discipline.
- Minimum of 2 years of relevant industry experience or postdoctoral research.
- Experience designing, managing, analyzing, and interpreting preclinical and clinical research.
- Strong scientific writing, literature evaluation, and communication skills.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities while collaborating across cross-functional teams.
Preferred
- Four or more years of relevant industry experience.
- Expertise in probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, fermentation-derived ingredients, or microbiome science.
- Experience in weight management and/or cardiometabolic health.
- Peer-reviewed publications and experience supporting product claim substantiation.
The Manager, DevOps Engineering is a hands-on technical leader responsible for designing, building, and operating scalable, cloud-native systems. This role functions as a player-coach, actively contributing to infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and platform reliability while leading a team of engineers. This position is critical to accelerating delivery, improving system resilience, and reducing operational overhead through direct technical execution and leadership.
Employee Value Proposition
As a pivotal member of a tight-knit, collaborative team, you'll play a vital role in building and scaling a new, innovative platform. We're exploring emerging technologies and transitioning toward self-sufficient, agile systems. Your influence will shape the way our developers build, test, and release software.
Key Performance Objectives
In the first 12–18 months, success will be measured by your ability to:
- Implement a self-service DevOps platform that allows developers to deploy, test, and monitor applications independently.
- Directly contribute to the design and implementation of core infrastructure, including Kubernetes (EKS), CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure as code.
- Deliver measurable improvements in deployment frequency, system uptime, and mean time to recovery (MTTR).
- Ensure successful migration and ownership of cloud infrastructure (e.g., EKS) from external vendors to internal teams.
- Drive continuous delivery adoption, including infrastructure-as-code, automated release orchestration, and real-time performance feedback loops.
- Enhance system observability and resilience by leveraging advanced monitoring tools (e.g., New Relic, Dynatrace) and automated alerting for production systems.
- Foster strong cross-functional collaboration with Development, QA, Product, and Security teams to align on delivery goals and operational excellence.
Primary Responsibilities & Deliverables
DevOps Strategy & Execution
- Lead the end-to-end design and continuous improvement of DevOps and SRE practices.
- Own CI/CD systems, cloud-native infrastructure, and deployment strategies across environments.
- Actively design, build, and maintain cloud infrastructure (AWS, EKS, networking, IAM).
- Write and maintain infrastructure as code (Terraform/CloudFormation).
- Troubleshoot complex production issues and performance bottlenecks.
Team Leadership & Delivery Management
- Mentor engineers through pairing, code reviews, and hands-on guidance.
- Allocate capacity between support, project work, automation initiatives, and incident response.
Platform & Infrastructure Ownership
- Continue current adoption of infrastructure as code (Terraform/CloudFormation) and container orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker).
Cross-Team Collaboration
- Act as a key partner for Development, QA, and Security teams to streamline release cycles and eliminate delivery bottlenecks.
- Participate in technical architecture reviews and post-mortems to ensure the production readiness of all systems.
Success Profile (Qualifications & Experience)
Education & Leadership
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline.
- 5+ years in DevOps or SRE roles, with 3+ years of direct people leadership.
Technical Expertise
- Mastery of cloud platforms (preferably AWS) and orchestration (Kubernetes).
- Experience with infrastructure tools (Terraform, CloudFormation).
- Skilled in CI/CD systems (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, CircleCI) and monitoring tools (New Relic, Dynatrace).
- Strong knowledge of configuration management tools (Ansible, Puppet, or Chef).
- Experience with API Gateway platforms (AWS API Gateway, Apigee).
Performance & Metrics-Driven
- Proven ability to use telemetry (logs, traces, metrics) to diagnose and improve system performance.
- Deep understanding of modern deployment strategies, including canary, blue/green, and rolling deployments.
Work Environment
- Willingness to participate in off-hours support rotations, including evenings, weekends, and holidays when needed.
- Committed to continuous improvement, ethical delivery, and maintaining strong stakeholder relationships.
About Plexus
Founded in gut health. Experts in microbiome. Plexus Worldwide®, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, is a renowned direct-selling company recognized as a top employer. Over the past 18 years, Plexus has dedicated itself to promoting hope, health, and happiness through its scientifically backed, innovative dietary supplements, weight management products, and personal care products, sold primarily through Plexus Brand Ambassadors. As a six-time Best Places to Work awardee, Blue Zone-approved employer, and an AZ Most Admired Company, Plexus prides itself on its robust organizational culture and commitment to community support and philanthropy. Our team is driven by a shared mission to empower individuals to achieve their health and wellness goals while offering additional income through the sale of products. Join us to be part of a team that values people, innovation, wellness, and community impact.
Benefits
- Highly rated and competitive medical plans.
- 401 (k) with company match and immediate vesting.
- 1-on-1, personalized health coaching.
- Many other voluntary benefits.
To learn more about Plexus Worldwide, please review our careers page at www.plexusworldwide.com/careers.
Learn more about our One Plexus culture. Watch this short video to see how our values, people, and purpose come together to make Plexus a great place to grow and make an impact. https://plexusworldwide-1.wistia.com/medias/zhfpm3vi4o.
Thank you for taking the time to apply for an opportunity with our One Plexus team! If you had any issues during the application process, please get in touch with us directly at [email protected].
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