Associate Director, IT

Stellaromics Inc. • Boston, MA

9d • Onsite

About The Position

Stellaromics is seeking an Associate Director of 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 existing environment includes cloud services, laboratory-connected instruments, on-premise and cloud storage, and outsourced support. The role will bring structure to this environment and develop it into a documented, secure operation with a roadmap and budget. The position has no large team initially and requires both hands-on execution and leadership across R&D, Manufacturing, Commercial, Finance, HR, and Legal.

The position is based onsite at Stellaromics’ Boston headquarters. Regular onsite presence is required to support laboratory instrumentation, network and server infrastructure, and user and equipment needs. The role may involve occasional after-hours or weekend work, equipment installation and lifting, work in server rooms and laboratories, and travel to other sites, vendors, or conferences.

The Associate Director will own large-scale storage and infrastructure, cybersecurity and risk management, IT vendors and suppliers, policy and governance, and cross-functional IT partnership. The role will develop storage lifecycle, backup and disaster-recovery practices; manage security controls and incident readiness; oversee vendors, licenses, and budgets; establish policies, procedures, and service management; and create a multi-year IT roadmap that supports scientific, manufacturing, commercial, and back-office systems. As the company grows, the role will help define and build the IT team.

Stellaromics describes its environment as collaborative and innovative, with an impactful role and opportunities for professional development and career advancement. Compensation and benefits are described as an attractive package based on market pay data and commensurate with candidate skills, qualifications, and experience.

Requirements

• 10 or more years of progressive IT experience, including at least 3 years managing IT operations, infrastructure, or security with direct accountability for outcomes.
• At least 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 covering identity and access management, endpoint security, vulnerability management, and incident response.
• Experience authoring and implementing IT policies, procedures, and controls in an immature or newly established environment.
• IT vendor and budget management experience, including contract negotiation, SLA management, and spend accountability.
• Experience leading cross-functional initiatives and influencing without direct authority; ability to work credibly with scientists, engineers, and executives.
• Working knowledge of AWS, Azure, or GCP; core networking; virtualization; and modern endpoint and identity management for macOS and Windows.
• Ability to perform hands-on work and present 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, Massachusetts.
• 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, including comfort with ambiguity, limited resources, and rapid change.
• Experience establishing governance for AI/ML tools and data usage.
• Certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CCSP, AWS or Azure certifications, or ITIL.

Responsibilities

• Own and scale on-premise and cloud storage for multi-terabyte imaging and sequencing datasets, including file and object storage, NAS/SAN, instrument capture, and archive tiers.
• Design and enforce data lifecycle, tiering, retention, and archival policies in partnership with R&D and Computational Biology.
• Own backup, replication, disaster recovery, recovery objectives, immutable or offline copies, and documented restore testing.
• 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 and data closets, UPS, and laboratory network segmentation.
• Forecast storage growth and costs, report to Finance, and drive cost optimization.
• Run day-to-day security operations, including endpoint protection/EDR, patch and 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 data protection, classification, and egress controls to protect intellectual property.
• Map 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, conduct tabletop exercises, and perform post-incident reviews.
• Assess vendor security, address contract security terms, and periodically reassess critical suppliers.
• Deliver security awareness training, phishing simulations, and onboarding education.
• Serve as the IT/security contact for customer 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 consolidation, and elimination of unused software.
• Build and own the IT operating and capital budgets, track spending against forecast, and provide Finance with defensible financial information.
• Set and monitor vendor SLAs and determine when services should be insourced or outsourced.
• Maintain an accurate inventory of software licenses, subscriptions, entitlements, and renewal dates.
• Author, socialize, and maintain IT 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 and offboarding checklists, and system documentation.
• Establish a practical IT ticketing and request process, service catalog, and responsiveness and resolution metrics.
• Implement lightweight change and configuration control for production and laboratory-critical systems.
• Partner with HR, Legal, and functional leaders to train on, enforce, and periodically review policies.
• Work with the executive team to develop and sequence a multi-year IT roadmap covering data storage, AI enablement, and security.
• Partner with R&D and Manufacturing on scientific computing, instrument integration, LIMS/ELN platforms, and quality and manufacturing systems.
• Support CRM, ERP, finance, and HR systems and their integrations.
• Enable responsible AI adoption through appropriate data-handling, IP-protection, access, and cost guardrails.
• Communicate risk, cost, and roadmap trade-offs to executives and, when requested, the board.
• Define the IT organization as the company scales and hire, onboard, and develop staff and contractors as headcount is approved.
• Perform additional responsibilities assigned by management.

Benefits

• Professional development and career advancement opportunities.
• Compensation and benefits package based on market pay data and commensurate with candidate skills, qualifications, and experience.

What This Job Offers

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