Head of Enterprise Applications

Benchling•San Francisco, CA

2d•$244,000 - $366,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Benchling is seeking a Head of Enterprise Applications to lead its business application portfolio and integrations. This role is crucial for supporting Benchling's mission to unlock the power of biotechnology by providing modern software solutions for modern science. The Head of Enterprise Applications will own the full lifecycle of platforms including Salesforce, NetSuite, Workday, Certinia, Gainsight, Zendesk, Atlassian, Slack, and Workato, ensuring seamless integration and efficient operation. The position is ideal for a leader looking to build a robust business technology function, leveraging automation and AI to scale output faster than headcount. The role involves managing high-visibility programs related to revenue generation, implementing AI in enterprise applications, expanding self-service capabilities, and ensuring systems are audit-ready, particularly for public-company financial reporting. This leadership position reports to the CIO/CISO and collaborates closely with various departments including Finance, RevOps, Sales, CX, People, and Legal.

Requirements

10+ years in enterprise or business applications.
5+ years leading teams in a fast-paced startup environment. You've managed managers and owned a budget.
You've owned a multi-platform SaaS portfolio at scale, spanning at least CRM, ERP, and HRIS, plus the integration layer between them.
Deep Salesforce experience, including quote-to-cash and CPQ/RevCloud in a company with real pricing and packaging complexity.
Hands-on familiarity with an integration platform such as Workato, MuleSoft, Boomi, or Tray, and a point of view on how to run an integration practice rather than a queue of one-off connections.
A track record of measurable automation outcomes. You can name the metric, the baseline, and where it stands now.
Practical experience applying AI to enterprise application work, with the judgment to tell a real value-add capability from a demo.
You've built internal self-service that reduced request volume, and you can explain how you got the business to adopt it.
You've scaled systems controls through a company's move to public-company financial reporting. That means designing and operating SOX IT general controls across core financial systems, running access reviews and change management to an auditable standard, automating evidence collection, and working directly with internal and external auditors.
You've taken over programs mid-flight and stabilized them, including telling a senior sponsor that a committed date needs to move.
Strong vendor management: contract negotiation, renewal strategy, and portfolio rationalization with documented savings.
Clear written communication with non-technical audiences. You can explain a systems tradeoff to a savvy CFO and a process tradeoff to a sales team in the same week.
Curiosity about life science. Prior industry knowledge isn't required.

Nice To Haves

NetSuite, Certinia, or Workday ownership.
Experience with Snowflake, Salesforce Data Cloud, or an analytics platform as part of the application data layer.
Experience managing a distributed contractor or partner bench alongside full-time staff.

Responsibilities

Own the portfolio and the architecture. Set the target-state SaaS portfolio, the integration standards, and the data-flow patterns for the company. Govern platform selection, rationalization, and lifecycle decisions. Decide what we buy, build, consolidate, and retire, and back each call with cost and risk data.
Land the programs that move revenue. You'll take the reins on a set of high-visibility programs across quote-to-cash, pricing and packaging, and consumption billing. Assess them quickly, shape them to the outcome the business needs, and give clear, early guidance on what will land and when.
Multiply team output through automation. Take the delivery work this team does today, including configuration, change management, testing, release, access review, and ticket triage, and systematically remove the manual parts. Set targets, instrument the work, and report the results. Success is measured in throughput and quality per person.
Put AI to work where it earns its place. Build practical AI into how the team works and into the platforms we run, in partnership with our AI and Data Engineering (AIDE) team. Be clear-eyed about where a model genuinely helps and where it doesn't. We care more about what you shipped and what it saved than which tools you used.
Expand self-service across the company. Push requests upstream to the teams that own the process. Build the documentation, guardrails, request patterns, and in-product help that let Finance, GTM, People, Legal, and CX teams solve their own problems safely, then measure the deflection.
Build audit-ready systems ahead of the requirement. Design and operate IT general controls across the platforms that carry financial data, covering access provisioning and reviews, segregation of duties, change management, and evidence capture. Controls should be a byproduct of how the team already works, not an annual scramble. You'll partner with Finance, Internal Audit, and Trust and Compliance on control design and external audit readiness.
Grow the team and the bench. You'll inherit a strong core: a manager running the run-the-business function, an integration architect, Salesforce delivery capacity, and a flexible contractor bench. Get the full-time and contractor mix right, develop the people already here, and hire deliberately against capability gaps.
Partner across the company. Work directly with Finance, RevOps, Sales, CX, People, and Legal leaders on the roadmap and on the process changes behind each system change. Prioritize openly, and explain the reasoning when the answer is no.