About the RoleWe're hiring an Innovation Scientist to help turn early-stage university research into investable companies. Working alongside founders and TandemLaunch executives, you'll own the narrative and external positioning for 1-2 new ventures per year from pre-incorporation through their first institutional round - shaping their demo storyline, customer and investor materials, and co-leading the search for each venture's founding CEO. This role will shape the ventures we capitalize and how they're positioned in the market and investors.
What You'll Do- Own the pitch storyline for each venture - the live narrative we use with investors and strategic partners, investor days, and customer meetings. Drive timelines, manage milestones, and ensure each gate is hit.
- Craft customer and investor-facing materials - executive summaries, white papers, pitch decks, demo videos - working directly with researchers to translate deep tech into "why now" and "who cares."
- Co-lead the founding CEO search for each new venture alongside TandemLaunch executives. You'll source through TandemLaunch's 15-year-deep operator network, screen for venture-specific fit, and shepherd the hiring process through. By year two, you'll have helped place 2-3 founding CEOs.
- Contribute to portfolio-wide initiatives (investor events, demo days, pitch coaching) as needed.
What We're Looking For- Technical fluency sufficient to hold a credible conversation with hardware engineers, ML researchers, and physicists. We typically see this come from a PhD in engineering or physics - but a research-track MSc plus deep-tech industry experience, or an engineering degree plus founding-team experience at a hard-tech startup, can be just as compelling.
- Storytelling chops - you've turned complex technical work into a narrative that landed with non-technical audiences.
- Strong written and verbal communication in English, with the ability to translate technical depth into clear narrative for non-technical investors and customers.
- Self-directed and energized by ambiguity - comfortable defining your own work when the brief is incomplete.
- Genuine curiosity and an appetite for breadth - you'd rather go an inch deep across five domains than a mile deep in one.
What We Offer- A seat at one of very few venture studios globally with 15+ years of track record in hardware-enabled deep tech.
- Deep involvement in 1-2 ventures per year from pre-incorporation through Series A, with 3-4 ventures in active orbit at any time.
- Direct mentorship from operators (co-founders, product leads, CEOs across the portfolio).
- A dynamic, entrepreneurial environment where you'll have real impact from day one.
- A supportive team that values curiosity, initiative, and collaboration.
