Associate Director, IT

Stellaromics • Boston, MA

8d • Onsite

About The Position

Stellaromics is seeking an Associate Director, Information Technology to build and own the company’s IT function. This is a hands-on role responsible for administering systems, managing storage and compute infrastructure, operating the security program, overseeing vendors, and establishing the policies, procedures, and controls needed to support growth, diligence, and protection of intellectual property. The current environment includes cloud services, lab-attached instrumentation, on-premise and cloud storage, and outsourced support. The role will bring structure to this environment and develop a documented, secure operation supported by a roadmap and budget.

The position has no large team initially and requires personally performing IT work while leading across R&D, Manufacturing, Commercial, Finance, HR, and Legal. It is based onsite at Stellaromics’ Boston headquarters, with regular onsite presence required to support lab instrumentation, network and server infrastructure, and hands-on user and equipment needs.

The Associate Director will own large-scale storage and infrastructure, including lifecycle management, backup and disaster recovery, research compute partnerships, networking, and cost forecasting. The role will run day-to-day cybersecurity operations, identity and access controls, incident readiness, vendor risk management, security awareness, and support for customer, investor, and other diligence. It will manage IT suppliers, contracts, software licenses, and operating and capital budgets; create policies, procedures, service management, and change controls; and partner with business functions on IT priorities, scientific and business systems, responsible AI adoption, and future team growth.

The role requires full-time onsite work in Boston. Occasional after-hours or weekend work may be needed for maintenance, migrations, and incident response. The position may involve lifting and installing equipment weighing up to approximately 40 pounds, working in server rooms and laboratory environments, and occasional travel to company sites, vendors, or conferences.

Requirements

• 10+ years of progressive IT experience, including 3+ years managing IT operations, infrastructure, or security with direct accountability for outcomes.
• 2+ years of IT experience in biopharma, biotech, genomics, or another life sciences environment, including exposure to regulated or GxP-aligned systems and scientific data.
• Hands-on ownership of large-scale data storage environments from multi-terabyte to petabyte scale, including capacity planning, tiering, backup, and disaster recovery.
• Practical cybersecurity experience in identity and access management, endpoint security, vulnerability management, and incident response.
• Experience authoring and implementing IT policies, procedures, and controls in an environment where they were absent or immature.
• IT vendor and budget management experience, including contract negotiation, SLA management, and spend accountability.
• Experience leading cross-functional initiatives and influencing without direct authority, with credibility among scientists, engineers, and executives.
• Working knowledge of cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP; core networking; virtualization; and modern macOS and Windows endpoint and identity management.
• Comfort performing hands-on technical work and presenting roadmaps and budgets to leadership.
• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Ability to work onsite full time in Boston, MA, with regular onsite presence to support lab, network, and server infrastructure.
• Ability to lift and install IT and network equipment weighing up to approximately 40 pounds and work in server rooms and laboratory environments.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with research computing and scientific data, including HPC or cloud pipelines, imaging or sequencing data at scale, LIMS/ELN platforms such as Benchling, and instrument-attached workstations.
• Experience achieving or maintaining SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, or GxP/21 CFR Part 11 compliance, or supporting customer and investor security diligence.
• Startup or high-growth company experience and comfort with ambiguity, limited resources, and rapid change.
• Experience establishing governance for AI/ML tools and data use.
• Relevant certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CCSP, AWS or Azure certifications, or ITIL.

Responsibilities

• Own and administer the on-premise and cloud storage estate, including file/object storage, NAS/SAN, instrument capture, and archive tiers.
• Develop data lifecycle, tiering, retention, and archival policies with R&D and Computational Biology.
• Own backup, replication, and disaster recovery; define RPO/RTO by data class, implement immutable or offline copies, and test restores on a documented schedule.
• Partner with Computational Biology on HPC and/or cloud compute, capacity planning, data transfer performance, and instrument-to-storage-to-analysis data flows.
• Manage LAN/WLAN, switching, firewalls, VPN and remote access, server rooms/data closets, UPS, and lab network segmentation.
• Forecast storage growth and costs, report to Finance, and drive cost optimization.
• Run day-to-day security operations, including endpoint protection/EDR, patching, vulnerability management, email security, logging, alerting, and incident response.
• Administer SSO/MFA and conditional access; enforce least privilege and manage joiner/mover/leaver reviews and privileged access controls.
• Implement practical data protection, classification, and egress controls to protect scientific and engineering intellectual property.
• Map security controls to an appropriate framework such as NIST CSF, CIS Controls, ISO 27001, or SOC 2; prioritize gaps and maintain evidence.
• Write and rehearse incident response and business continuity plans, including tabletop exercises and post-incident reviews.
• Assess vendor security, review contract security terms, and periodically reassess critical suppliers.
• Deliver security awareness training, phishing simulations, and onboarding education.
• Support customer security questionnaires, insurance, investor and partner diligence, and applicable regulatory or quality requirements.
• Manage MSPs, cloud providers, hardware and software suppliers, telecom/ISP providers, and scientific IT vendors, including scope, SLAs, escalation, and performance reviews.
• Lead vendor selection, RFPs, renewals, negotiations, tool rationalization, and elimination of unused software.
• Build and own the IT operating and capital budgets, track spend against forecasts, and provide Finance with defensible numbers.
• Establish measured SLAs and hold providers accountable; determine when to insource or outsource.
• Maintain inventories of software licenses, subscriptions, entitlements, and renewal dates.
• Author, socialize, and maintain policies covering acceptable use, access control, data classification and retention, change and asset management, remote work and BYOD, AI tool usage, incident response, and business continuity.
• Create SOPs, runbooks, onboarding/offboarding checklists, and system documentation.
• Establish a practical ticketing and request process, service catalog, and responsiveness and resolution metrics.
• Implement lightweight but effective change and configuration control for production and lab-critical systems.
• Partner with HR, Legal, and functional leaders to train on, enforce, and periodically review policies.
• Work with the executive team to create and sequence a multi-year IT roadmap covering data storage, AI enablement, and security.
• Partner with R&D and Manufacturing on scientific computing, lab instrument integration, LIMS/ELN platforms, and quality/manufacturing systems.
• Support CRM, ERP, finance, and HR systems and their integrations.
• Enable responsible AI adoption with appropriate safeguards for data handling, IP protection, access, and cost.
• Present risk, cost, and roadmap trade-offs to non-technical executives and the board when asked.
• Define the IT organization as the company scales and hire, onboard, and develop staff and contractors as headcount is approved.
• Perform additional responsibilities as assigned by management.

Benefits

• Compensation and benefits package based on market pay data and commensurate with skills, qualifications, and experience.
• Opportunities for professional development and career advancement.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior