Director of Brand & Communications, Formation Bio
$177.5-232k
+ Equity
3 days a week in office
End-to-end medical trial solutions
Open for applications
End-to-end medical trial solutions
101-200 employees
Open for applications
$177.5-232k
+ Equity
3 days a week in office
101-200 employees
Company mission
To bring new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently.
Role
Who you are
- 7+ years in brand, communications, or a related field — ideally in-house at a tech company or VC — with real exposure to media relations and external brand work
- You follow the AI and founder conversations in real time, have strong opinions, and can place Formation Bio precisely within it across every channel that matters: legacy press, Substack, X, podcasts, and whatever comes next
- Exceptional writer across formats — press materials, op-eds, executive briefings, brand narratives — with the range to shift register completely depending on audience
- Deep knowledge of the media landscape: the reporters, substackers, newsletters, and podcasts shaping how tech and biotech thinks
- Comfortable working directly with founders, translating vision into external narrative with minimal hand-holding and maximum judgment
- High-ownership operator who manages multiple workstreams with minimal supervision and treats ambiguity as a creative problem, not a grievance
- Demonstrated track record with AI tools and systems in day-to-day work — this is a baseline expectation
- Background in product marketing, life sciences, or high-touch branded experiences is a strong plus; startup experience strongly preferred
What the job involves
- This is a role for someone with strong horsepower: a chronically online, deeply opinionated communications mind who knows the media landscape the way a trader knows the market — who's up, who’s down, who's moving, what's resonating, and where the next conversation is going to happen before it does
- You read everything
- You know which journalists are worth a pitch and which Substackers and tweeters are quietly shaping how the industry thinks
- You understand that a founder's tweet, a long-form profile, and a regulatory milestone press release are completely different instruments, and you know how to play all of them
- You operate with great taste and discipline
- Pharma is a highly regulated industry where the wrong word in the wrong place can have real consequences — and you understand how to take creative risks within that reality
- You'll work directly with the Head of Brand & Communications and with Formation Bio's co-founders — helping translate a genuinely novel vision for what drug development can be into narrative, presence, and momentum across every channel that matters
- External Brand & Media
- Own media relations across the full spectrum — legacy press, trade media, new media, and influential independent voices (substackers, newsletter writers, podcast hosts) — with a sharp view of who moves the needle and why
- Build and maintain real relationships with journalists, editors, and media figures covering AI, biotech, pharma, and the broader tech and founder ecosystem — not a contact list, actual relationships
- Drive PR and communications strategy around our pipeline drug assets, from scientific and regulatory milestones to patient and policy initiatives, op-eds, and external events — understanding that each moment requires a different kind of storytelling
- Maintain a living, actionable read on the media landscape — tracking coverage, emerging narratives, and the voices that are gaining influence — so our communications strategy is always ahead, not reactive
- Work directly with the Head of Brand & Communications and co-founders on executive positioning and thought leadership, with the judgment to identify the right platform, the right moment, and the right angle
- Brand Initiatives
- Support planning and execution of external brand initiatives such as investor events, conferences, branded experiences, and our presence in the pharma and AI conversation, with the taste and operational rigor to make them land flawlessly
- Collaborate with the People team on talent brand workstreams, including content and events that attract the best talent across pharma and AI
- Partner with our Content team - both strategically and in the weeds - on written, video, web, and social to advance brand goals
- Brand Operations
- Maintain and evolve internal brand resources — guidelines, design libraries, tools, and norms — so every team can represent Formation Bio accurately and confidently
- Build AI-powered systems and workflows that raise the speed, consistency, and quality of output across the function — this is table stakes, not a stretch goal
- Be the internal authority on brand standards, with the credibility and communication skills to bring the rest of the organization along
Our take
Clinical drug trials are lengthy and expensive, delaying the supply of vital new drugs to patients and costing lives. For Formation Bio, this is an efficiency issue - one which it hopes to solve with its end-to-end automation solution.
According to the company, its approach has teams running medical trials twice as fast and at half the cost. This success has pushed Formation to expand beyond supporting trials into developing assets itself. In 2025, it reached a major milestone by licensing its first drug in a deal worth up to hundreds of millions. Alongside this, the company has also added an early immunology program to its pipeline, signalling a broader push into in-house development.
Now a Unicorn, with partners including Pfizer, Sanofi, Novartis and 23andMe, Formation Bio is steadily embedding itself within the Big Pharma ecosystem. How far it can go remains an open question, but the prospect of cheaper drugs and faster innovation is becoming harder for the industry to ignore.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
30% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Jun 2024
$372m
SERIES D
Sep 2021
$156m
SERIES C
Total funding: $530.3m
Company benefits
- Flexible Time Off: We have a flexible PTO policy as we trust our team members to take the time they need to recharge.
- Parental Leave: We believe your personal life enriches your professional one. We offer 16 weeks of paid parental leave for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents so you can start or grow your family.
- Comprehensive Benefits: All full time employees have access to health, vision, and dental insurance. Additionally, we provide pre-tax commuter benefits, access to a 401k plan, short and long-term disability and life insurance.
- Education & Career Development Resources: Formation Bio offers a plethora of professional development resources to employees. Some examples include fireside chats with industry experts, conference passes, certification courses, internal mobility opportunities, in depth manager training, leadership coaching program, and more.
- Strategic Hiring Hubs: Formation Bio teams are hybrid and based in four key hubs: New York City, Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, and North Carolina’s Research Triangle. Our bright and collaborative NYC headquarters is conveniently located near major transit hubs and stocked with drinks, coffee, snacks, and a weekly lunch.
- Community: Our teams collaborate closely to achieve our mission, supporting each other across functions and priorities. We build connection through team-building events, quarterly company gatherings, a company-wide retreat every two years, and Employee Resource Groups.
Company HQ
Midtown South, New York, NY
Leadership
Benjamine Liu
(Co-Founder & CEO)Worked as a computational biologist at various Neurology departments, following a D.Phil in computational Biology and Psychiatry at Oxford. They are also an Advisor at Harvard Business School.
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