Role
This is the foundational scientific hire as we begin scaling Lumina. You'll be the main voice for food microbiology, environmental monitoring, and food safety in a company that, by design, is mostly hardware engineers, ML researchers, and platform builders.…
Head of Food Science Lumina · Atlanta, GA (preferred), Hybrid (considered)
About Lumina
Lumina is building the first distributed, real-time pathogen detection platform for food manufacturing. We deploy hyperspectral imaging and AI on the production floor where contamination is actually happening instead of in a centralized lab yielding results days later. The founding thesis is simple: the lab-based testing paradigm (PCR, ATP, bench-top Raman) is too infrequent, too slow, too expensive. We're replacing the lab with sensors. Today we’re a team of engineers with deep expertise in remote sensing, machine vision, and data analysis now bringing our talents food safety. Our founder spent the last 15 years building sensors in public safety where his product was called “ the best investigative tool since DNA. ” We’re comfortably funded by reputable venture firms and we've recently acquired a portfolio of sensing and analysis IP from Tufts University — 30 years of hyperspectral imaging research, with the last 5+ focused specifically on bacterial detection and classification. In 2024 this research demonstrated 95% accuracy in detecting E. Coli across surfaces ranging from product (spinach, chicken breast) to equipment (stainless, plastics). Our full AI pipeline — camera data in, bacterial classification out — saw its first demonstration last week and we’re heading to the shop floor this fall. Our first pilot customer deployments are aimed squarely at ready-to-eat (RTE) food manufacturers, where Listeria monocytogenes and a handful of related pathogens drive the bulk of recall risk and human cost.
About this role
This is the foundational scientific hire as we begin scaling Lumina. You'll be the main voice for food microbiology, environmental monitoring, and food safety in a company that, by design, is mostly hardware engineers, ML researchers, and platform builders. Your work will determine three things directly: 1. How our sensors work in the real world. The training and validation data our biolab generates is what makes the AI right or wrong. The quality of that data — surface coverage, strain selection, soil and biofilm conditions, time points, controls — is a scientific judgment call before it's a model-performance metric. 2. Whether customers trust us. Plant managers, FSQA leaders, and VPs of Operation at RTE manufacturers are sophisticated buyers. They've spent careers building environmental monitoring programs (EMPs) and running root-cause analyses. They will not deploy a new sensor system based on engineering charisma alone. They'll deploy it because someone they respect, who speaks their language, helped them think through where it fits in their existing program. 3. Whether our product roadmap is the right one. Which surfaces, organisms, sanitizer residues, processing environments, and detection thresholds we prioritize over the next 12–24 months is a science question as much as an engineering one. You'll report to the CEO and build the scientific team underneath you.
What you'll do
- Lead the biolab. Directly supervise our laboratory program: define experimental design, hire and manage the scientists and technicians as the lab grows, set protocols and standards for sample prep and data collection, and own the systematic library of training and validation data across surfaces (stainless steel, HDPE, ABS, and beyond), strains, soil matrices, and conditions.
- Own scientific rigor for the AI pipeline. Define and run the regression-testing framework that tells the ML team whether a new model is genuinely better. Decide what counts as ground truth. Catch the failure modes that an engineer wouldn't think to look for.
- Set the pathogen and surface roadmap. Prioritize which organisms (starting with L. monocytogenes , expanding through Salmonella , STEC, and others) and which processing environments (RTE deli, dairy, smoked fish, fresh-cut produce, frozen) we cover next, and when.
- Be the customer-facing scientific authority. Sit in on customer scoping calls, root-cause analyses, and design-partner reviews. Translate between Lumina's capability and a plant's real EMP. Help customers redesign their sampling plans around continuous in-line detection — not just bolt our sensors onto unchanged workflows.
- Build Lumina's food-safety credibility externally. Author white papers, speak at IAFP and equivalent venues, publish where it makes sense, and represent Lumina to FDA and FSIS, to trade groups (AFFI, IDFA, NFI, IFT), and to academic collaborators.
- Hire your team. Recruit the next scientific team members. Help shape our scientific advisory board.
What you bring
- PhD in food science, food microbiology, microbiology, or a closely related field. Outstanding industry track record is a valid substitute.
- Deep working knowledge of Listeria monocytogenes : biology, environmental persistence, EMP design, root-cause analysis, and the FDA/FSIS regulatory framework around RTE foods.
- Hands-on experience running or supervising a microbiology laboratory — experimental design, documentation discipline, BSL-2 work, strain libraries, contamination controls.
- Direct experience with environmental monitoring in commercial food processing facilities, ideally RTE. Either you've designed and operated an EMP at a manufacturer, or you've investigated and remediated facilities as a consultant or academic collaborator.
- The judgment to know when "good enough" data is good enough, and when it isn't.
- The communication range to be credible with a plant sanitation supervisor at 6 AM and with our ML team at 6 PM.
- Comfort with early-stage-company ambiguity, where the answer to "what's the protocol for X?" is sometimes "go write it."
Nice to have
- Training or postdoctoral experience in a leading academic food safety program (Cornell, Penn State, Purdue, UGA, Texas Tech, Virginia Tech, Illinois, Arkansas, or equivalent).
- Whole-genome-sequencing and bioinformatics fluency for Listeria source tracking and persistence analysis.
- Industry experience at an RTE manufacturer, food-safety consultancy, or detection-method vendor (Neogen, bioMérieux, Hygiena, etc).
- Existing relationships with QA and food-safety leaders at major RTE manufacturers across deli, dairy, smoked fish, fresh-cut, and frozen.
- Familiarity with FSMA, and state-level EMP requirements.
Why this role, now
If you've spent your career publishing on Listeria persistence, designing EMPs that get worked around by sanitation crews, or running validations on detection methods that take 48 hours to return a positive — this is the chance to build the thing those efforts have been waiting for. You'd be the founding scientific authority on the team, not the seventh microbiologist in a 200-person FSQA org. The work has obvious and immediate public-health stakes. There are roughly 1,600 listeriosis cases and 260 deaths a year in the U.S. annually, almost all from contaminated RTE products. Your work will drive the front lines of the fight against Listeria outbreaks. You’ll be transforming an experiment you designed last month to a shop floor deployment that prevents the next recall.
Compensation and logistics
- Compensation: Competitive salary plus meaningful founding-team equity. - Location: We’re headquartered in Atlanta, GA and would love to have you here. We’ll consider remote/hybrid for the right candidate. - Reporting line: Reports to the CEO. Will build and lead the food science team.
How to apply
Send a CV and a short note describing a Listeria or EMP project you're particularly proud of — and what you'd want to do differently if you had a sensor that could see contamination in real time — to [tom@trustlumina.com] .