Assay Lead

Eli; Montreal (administrative region); On-site; CAD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Relocation support

Spa access

Job summary

Eli is seeking an Assay Lead to own the science behind the Hormometer®. You will report to the CTO and lead the assay group while staying hands-on at the bench in Montreal, on-site only.

This senior role focuses on developing new biomarker assays from bench to product customers buy and use. You will ship assays to market, manage validation, reagent stability, and scale-up challenges, while growing the team and communicating progress to a non-technical audience.

Qualifications

• Shipped a lateral flow assay to market from bench to a commercially released product.
• 5–8 years of assay development experience with hands-on bench work.
• Experience solving detection at very low concentrations in complex biological matrices (saliva a plus).
• Experience with reagent stability and shelf life, and lot-to-lot variability affecting manufacturing.
• Experience in IVD, at-home testing, or point-of-care diagnostics.
• Able to prioritise a research queue against hard commercial deadlines and terminate dead ends early.
• Able to explain technical uncertainty clearly to non-scientists.
• CRO experience or multiple assay development roles considered a plus.
• Exposure to ISO 13485 or FDA regulatory environments is advantageous.
• Hormone-specific assay experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead development of new lateral flow immunoassays from concept through to commercial release.
• Own performance specs (LOD, sensitivity, precision, stability) and design/execute validation studies.
• Own reagent formulation and stability, including shelf life.
• Troubleshoot assay challenges with manufacturing team during transfer, scale-up, and production.
• Prioritize the experiment queue and decide what to run or kill.
• Hire and grow the assay team as we scale.
• Communicate research progress to non-technical teams.
• Maintain clear, usable documentation of development and validation work.

Skills

Lateral flow assay

Bench science

Assay development

Analytical validation

Reagent stability

IVD/diagnostics

ISO 13485/FDA familiarity

Leadership

Communication to non-scientists

CRO experience

Job description

About us

Eli Health is making continuous hormone monitoring possible so users can support their daily and long-term health. No more waiting days to track key biomarkers—get results you can use within minutes. Eli’s flagship product, Hormometer™, is the first instant hormone monitoring platform to deliver results from saliva to mobile app—anytime, anywhere.

Developed over six years of R&D, over 2,000 product iterations, and backed by a dozen patent-pending innovations, Eli’s award-winning platform turns hormones into measurable signals you can track and improve. Just as the thermometer and glucometer have transformed health for millions, Eli’s platform is poised to be the next major evolution in tracking changes in stress, endurance, sleep, and more.

About the role

Eli is looking for an Assay Lead to own the science behind the Hormometer®. You will report directly to the CTO and lead our assay group while staying hands-on at the bench yourself.

Your priority is developing new biomarker assays and carrying them from bench to a product people buy and use. This is a lab-based, full-time, on-site role in Montreal. No remote or hybrid option. If you are outside Canada, we support relocation and immigration.

Your primary responsibilities will be to:

• Lead the development of new lateral flow immunoassays for additional hormones, from concept through to commercial release.

• Own the performance specs (limit of detection, sensitivity, precision, stability) and design and run the analytical validation studies that demonstrate them.

• Own reagent formulation and stability, including shelf life.

• Troubleshoot assay challenges that surface during transfer, scale-up, and production, alongside our manufacturing team, who own the process itself.

• Prioritize the experiment queue across the group: decide what gets run, what gets killed, and in what order.

• Hire and grow the assay team as we scale.

• Communicate research progress to a non-technical team.

• Keep clear, usable documentation of development and validation work.

This description is not exhaustive. We are looking for someone who has shipped an assay before and stayed to fix it when it broke in the real world.

About you

• You have shipped a lateral flow assay to market. You carried it from bench through to a commercially released product, not just through late-stage development.

• You have roughly 5–8 years of assay development experience. We care far more about what you have shipped than about the number.

• You are still hands-on at the bench. You lead by doing, not by delegating.

• You have solved detection at very low concentrations in a crude, complex biological matrix. Saliva experience is a strong plus.

• You have dealt with reagent stability and shelf life, and with lot-to-lot variability that showed up in manufacturing rather than in development.

• You have worked in IVD, at-home testing, or point-of-care diagnostics.

• You can prioritize a research queue against a hard commercial deadline, and kill a dead end early.

• You explain technical uncertainty clearly to non-scientists.

• (Advantage) You developed multiple different assays at a CRO, or shipped assays at more than one startup.

• (Advantage) You have worked under ISO 13485 or with FDA requirements.

• (Advantage) You have hormone-specific assay experience.

Why you’ll love working at Eli

• You’ll work with a group of talented and mission-driven people eager to improve lifelong health at scale.

• You’ll be part of the core team developing and commercializing the first product that monitors hormonal data daily and over a lifetime.

• You’ll join the startup phase and have a wide-reaching impact in a fast-paced, constantly evolving environment.

• You’ll be part of a small (<35 people), high-performing, diverse team where everything you do has tangible impact and shapes the company’s trajectory.

• You’ll be in an environment where people drive their own work, think creatively about open-ended problems, and solve them proactively.

• You’ll get health insurance (medical, dental, vision, and more) to ensure you and your family stay physically and mentally at your best.

• You’ll have flexibility over your vacations. We seek to hire great people, then give them the autonomy and space they need to achieve their goals.

• Our office and R&D facilities are in Montreal, where this role is based. The broader team is distributed, and we prioritize asynchronous workflows and minimize meetings to focus on the work itself.

• You and your +1 will have unlimited free access to the Bota Bota spa in Montreal to recharge.