GoGoGrandparent
A concierge service for seniors’ rides, meals, meds, home and more.
Immunology research scientist
About the role
Reports to: CEO
Location: Philadelphia, hybrid: remote + on-site lab work.
Employment type: Full-time
Travel: Occasional local travel for team offsites
About us
GoGo’s mission is to help older adults age independently in their home for as long as possible. Today we do that by supporting them with their errands. For us to ever meaningfully advance the mission, we’d like to use our position as one of the largest membership groups of home bound older adults to advance science that helps address the age related diseases that impact them.
Role overview
We are seeking a scientist to lead a research program using longitudinally collected blood samples from older adults. Together with those blood samples, we have a lot of ambient information about them: what we’ve delivered to them to eat, what their homes look like, if they’re a smoker, etc. You will design and execute studies, pursue external funding through grants, and partner closely with clinical/operations teams on blood sample collection, processing, and biobanking. This is a hands-on role spanning grant writing, study design, and field/lab-adjacent sample workflows.
Key responsibilities
Research & science
- Design and lead observational and/or interventional studies using serial blood samples from older adult cohorts
- Define research questions, endpoints, and analysis plans related to aging, health trajectories, and/or blood-based biomarkers
- Oversee sample metadata, longitudinal linkage, quality control, and data integrity
- Analyze or collaborate on analysis of assay, clinical, and longitudinal outcomes data; publish and present findings
- Stay current on aging biology, biomarkers, and relevant assay technologies
Grants & funding
- Identify funding opportunities (NIH, foundations, industry partners, other sponsors)
- Lead or co-lead grant proposals: aims, significance, approach, biosketches, budgets, and supporting documents
- Manage funded projects including timelines, milestones, reporting, and compliance
- Build collaborations with academic, clinical, and industry partners to strengthen proposals and science
Sample collection & operations
- Help design and refine blood collection protocols (consent, visit schedule, tubes/anticoagulants, processing, storage, shipping)
- Support or supervise collection workflows with participants, phlebotomy staff, clinics, or home-visit teams as applicable
- Ensure adherence to IRB/ethics, HIPAA/privacy, biosafety, and chain-of-custody requirements
- Coordinate with labs and vendors for processing, aliquoting, assays, and long-term storage
- Troubleshoot collection/logistics issues and continuously improve yield, quality, and participant experience
Team & leadership
- Mentor research assistants as the program scales
- Communicate progress clearly to leadership and cross-functional partners
Required qualifications
- PhD (or equivalent) in biology, biochemistry, immunology, epidemiology, geriatric science, translational medicine, or related field; or MD/DO with substantial research experience
- Demonstrated experience with human biospecimen research, preferably plasma, sera or PBMCs
- Track record of grant writing (as PI, co-I, or major contributor) and/or funded proposals
- Experience with IRB protocols, informed consent, and human subjects research compliance
- Strong scientific writing and project management skills
- Ability to work directly with multidisciplinary clinical/ops teams
- Experience harvesting plasma, sera & PBMCs from whole blood
Preferred qualifications
- Experience in aging / geroscience / geriatric cohorts
- Familiarity with blood biomarker platforms (e.g., proteomics, metabolomics, inflammatory markers, epigenetic clocks, clinical chemistry)
- Prior responsibility for biobanking, sample SOPs, or multicenter collection
- Experience with statistical analysis of longitudinal data (or close collaboration with biostatisticians)
- Publications in relevant peer-reviewed journals
What success looks like (first 12-18 months)
- Reliable longitudinal collection pipeline running with high sample quality and documentation
- At least 2 competitive grant submissions led or co-led
- Clear research roadmap and early analyses / manuscripts in progress
About the interview
The Interview Process
Apply here
1st Round: 20 minute intro call with hiring manager
2nd Round: 45 minute deep dive about candidate’s background, covering relevant grant writing experience
3rd Round, Case Study: Specific Aims one page project proposal of a research question the candidate would explore with our cohort’s data. The one sheet should have:
- Unmet need
- Central question / hypothesis
- Aims
- Impact/Deliverables
Note: no need to spec out an Approach or an Ask from a funder
4th Round: 30 minute panel Interview with team
5th Round: Two 15 minute Reference Checks
About GoGoGrandparent
We built GoGo for our own grandparents and were amazed to see it grow to touch the lives of hundreds of thousands of seniors across the United States and Canada. What shocked us then and it still does now, is that between 30 - 40% of our new signups have smartphones. We didn’t understand why. When we called and asked a few, they told us that Uber and Lyft had 'stopped working' for them.
After puzzling over that for months, we realized what the problem was.
Managing transportation - on Lyft, Uber, cab companies, etc is not easy. It’s a ‘self-serve’ experience. The ride requester has to be aware of things like the driver cancelling, getting lost, the driver arriving, the driver not-quite-being-lost-just-down-the-street-a-couple-houses.
Then add the complexities of smartphones: the user has to be on top of updating their own credit card - making sure the pickup pin is in the correct spot - typing in both where they are and where they’re going. All in all, there are about a dozen online and offline "micro steps" ride requesters have to take to get a ride. And god help anyone who needs to remember their Apple iCloud password to update an app.
We didn't know this when we started, but it turns out that ordering and managing a ride gets more difficult the older you get, almost in the same way that driving a car gets more difficult the older you get.
What gets us excited now (and what we’re hiring for) is that technically this ‘self-management problem’ doesn’t just stop at rides. There are lots of things that get harder to do as you age. People have known this for a long time and that’s inspired a lot of the solutions that older adults currently have.
Based a lot on the experiences we’ve had so far, we believe that by becoming the ‘management layer’ for the things that older adults struggle with as they age we have a better chance to offer older citizens independence without having to ask them to move out of their homes.
Within the next ten years the number of people over the age of 65 will be larger than the number of people under 18 for the first time in history. 11,000,000 people over the age of 75 will stop driving due to age related cognitive or physical decline. When they stop driving, they’ll be forced to rely on friends and family, live in a community, or have caregivers. GoGo is working to make sure that losing your youth doesn’t mean losing your independence.
Joining us at this time is a really exciting opportunity for folks looking to make meaningful impact on people’s lives. We’re a small team that’s built a profitable and fast-growing business over the last three years. Now we’re looking for partners to join us as we make GoGo a household name.
Anyone joining GoGo at this phase of the company will have a huge and life changing level of impact on a size-able and growing user base. We want people to have rich and meaningful lives at any age. We’re bringing people freedom and hope, one life at a time.
