Best company for a first experience in the synthetic biology industry - Synthetic Biologist Touchlight Employee Review

Really exciting technology and field to be in, great work events, friendly coworkers

Being in a rapidly growing companies requires some flexibility and acceptance of changes

The science is interesting and the people you interact with day to day are great.

A once ambitious biotech startup that has slowly been run into the ground. Senior management constantly shifts priorities and objectives (often monthly) to appease current and prospective clients, without putting the processes in place to support that rate of change. The company often goes through rounds of high recruitment (based on superficially high sales predictions) followed by mass redundancies when these targets aren't met. These redundancies consistently target scientist-level employees, never the people who made the original predictions. Additional work is routinely taken on under the guise of "personal development," with no corresponding career progression. This was made clear to me when a collaborator reached out personally to note that the volume and level of work I was producing didn't match my job title, and asked whether this was standard practice at the company. You can also pinpoint the moment the company stopped caring about employee sentiment: HR stopped responding to Glassdoor reviews after September 2025. Touchlight used to be a genuinely exciting place to work; collaborative, friendly, with everyone pulling toward a common goal. That environment has been steadily eroded to what it is today.