Director, Laboratory Automation
About The Position
The Director, Laboratory Automation in Cell & Gene Therapy will lead a multidisciplinary organization that defines and executes the automation strategy for analytical and process development within Therapeutics Development & Supply. The role will transform laboratory operations from automated workflows into highly integrated, digitally connected, hands-free operations that accelerate development timelines, increase capacity, improve quality, reduce errors, and enhance scientific decision-making through agentic, closed-loop learning. The Director provides strategic leadership for assay automation, robotics integration, orchestration, digitalization, automated and agentic workflows, and next-generation automation technologies. This leader partners with Scientific Development, Process Development, Data Science, Digital & Technology, Engineering & Property Services, Supply Chain, Safety, and external technology partners to design, deploy, and scale autonomous laboratory solutions across the global development network. The role develops long-term automation roadmaps, builds scalable organizational capabilities, and ensures automation platforms are reliable, robust, and able to meet current business needs and future autonomous laboratory requirements.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Biological Sciences, Biochemistry, Computer Science, Automation Engineering, Robotics, or a related scientific discipline.
- At least 10 years of relevant laboratory automation, engineering, scientific, or technology experience.
- At least 5 years of leadership experience managing technical and scientific teams.
- Experience implementing large-scale, orchestrated automation programs within biotechnology, pharmaceutical, or healthcare organizations.
- At least two years working with AI-enabled equipment control, with demonstrated direct experience in automated optimization and autonomous decision-making.
- Demonstrated experience developing and deploying multi-workflow, hands-free, integrated, and orchestrated laboratory automation systems.
- Experience with liquid handling platforms, robotics systems, orchestration software, and laboratory scheduling solutions.
- Experience integrating automation systems with enterprise digital and data platforms.
- Demonstrated ability to influence and lead across complex matrix organizations.
- Strong business acumen and ability to align technology investments with strategic outcomes.
- Excellent communication, presentation, and stakeholder management skills.
Nice To Haves
- Advanced degree (MS, MBA, or PhD).
- Experience supporting cell therapy, gene therapy, biologics, or advanced therapeutic modalities.
- Experience with advanced analytics, automation digital twins, or autonomous laboratory technologies.
Responsibilities
- Develop and execute the long-term laboratory automation and robotics strategy across development laboratories.
- Establish multi-year automation roadmaps aligned with organizational priorities and future-state digital laboratory ambitions.
- Drive adoption of innovative automation, robotics, AI-enabled automated equipment control, and next-generation laboratory orchestration technologies.
- Identify opportunities to accelerate learning, increase capacity, reduce cycle time, improve quality, and decrease manual laboratory operations.
- Lead the design, development, deployment, and lifecycle management of integrated laboratory automation systems.
- Oversee implementation of end-to-end automated and orchestrated workflows across multiple platforms, including semantics and automation ontology.
- Drive architecture decisions for liquid handling, robotics, laboratory scheduling systems, laboratory orchestration platforms, and agentic and automated data systems.
- Lead evaluation, selection, and implementation of new automation technologies and strategic vendor partnerships.
- Ensure technical governance, standardization, and scalability across automation platforms.
- Lead strategies for diagnosing and resolving complex, cross-platform automation failures across equipment, software, networks, infrastructure, and enterprise technology environments.
- Establish resilient automation architectures incorporating system monitoring, centralized logging, configuration management, cybersecurity, backup and recovery, change control, and business continuity.
- Build and lead a high-performing organization of automation leaders, automation engineers, software engineers, robotics specialists, and laboratory scientists.
- Develop talent and succession plans and foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.
- Provide leadership across multiple functional teams and matrix organizations.
- Support capability development strategies that ensure long-term organizational competitiveness.
- Partner with Digital & Technology and Data Science teams to establish connected laboratory ecosystems.
- Drive integration between laboratory automation systems, LIMS, ELN, MES, data lakes, analytics platforms, and AI-enabled solutions.
- Enable automated data capture, contextualization, visualization, and scientific insight generation.
- Support development of autonomous and self-optimizing laboratory capabilities.
- Ensure laboratory automation systems comply with safety and regulatory requirements.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
