Senior Director, Corporate Strategy (San Diego / Hybrid)

Illumina•San Diego, CA

11d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Director, Corporate Strategy is a senior member of the Enterprise Strategy team who leads some of Illumina’s most consequential enterprise strategy efforts and serves as a trusted strategic advisor to senior executives. The role helps define Illumina’s long-term direction and strategic priorities, converts ambiguous leadership questions into clearly framed decisions, builds the fact base needed to evaluate alternatives, and develops recommendations that make major choices and trade-offs explicit. Operating in a global, matrixed, science- and technology-driven environment, the Senior Director independently leads high-stakes work involving the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) and, when appropriate, the Board. The role integrates market, customer, scientific, technology, competitive, operational, and financial perspectives; maintains an independent enterprise point of view; and leads through influence across R&D, Product, Commercial, Finance, Corporate Development, Medical, Operations, and regional leadership. Business and functional leaders own execution; Corporate Strategy supports decision clarity, alignment, and follow-through without owning enterprise transformation or day-to-day implementation.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in business, economics, finance, engineering, life sciences, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Prior background in a top consulting firm.
Typically requires 16-20 years of direct relevant strategy experience: Directly relevant strategy experience: 10+ years in corporate strategy, top-tier strategy consulting, or equivalent senior strategic roles addressing enterprise, market, growth, portfolio, business-model, or capability decisions.
C-suite advisory experience: Within that experience, 5+ years directly advising C-suite executives or equivalent enterprise decision-makers, including framing strategic decisions, developing recommendations, facilitating executive discussions, and presenting decision-ready materials.
Candidates must have personally led this work and demonstrated a strong executive presence, serving as the primary presenter and facilitator in discussions with Executive Leadership Teams (ELT).
This experience must include independently delivering presentations, defending analyses and recommendations, responding to executive challenge and scrutiny, and influencing enterprise-level decisions.
End-to-end strategy leadership: 5+ years independently leading complex, high-ambiguity, cross-functional strategy engagements from problem definition and analysis through recommendation and executive decision.
Strategy team development: 3+ years leading and coaching multi-person, multi-level strategy teams, with demonstrated impact on the quality and growth of other strategists.
Analytical capability: Advanced structured problem-solving, quantitative analysis, financial modeling, scenario development, synthesis, and executive communication skills.
Enterprise influence: Demonstrated ability to form an independent point of view, challenge established assumptions constructively and influence senior stakeholders across a complex global matrix without relying on formal authority.
Commercial and technology judgment: Strong commercial and financial judgment and the ability to understand complex scientific and technology-driven markets and translate them into enterprise implications.
Ability to travel domestically and internationally up to 20%, based on business needs.
Flexibility to support time-sensitive ELT or Board decision cycles across global time zones.

Nice To Haves

MBA, master’s degree, or other relevant advanced degree.
Experience in genomics, life sciences, diagnostics, healthcare, or another technology-intensive industry.
Experience preparing for or participating in Board-level strategy discussions in a public-company or similarly complex environment.
A combination of external advisory and in-house corporate strategy experience, or equivalent breadth across enterprise and business-level questions.
Experience evaluating partnerships, acquisitions, or other inorganic options as part of a broader strategy, without requiring transaction-execution specialization.

Responsibilities

Lead enterprise strategy development.
Help define and evolve Illumina’s long-term direction and enterprise strategic priorities.
Translate market, customer, scientific, technology, competitive, and financial developments into implications for Illumina, and connect enterprise aspirations to a coherent set of strategic choices.
Frame ambiguous executive decisions.
Convert broad or unclear leadership concerns into defined decisions, meaningful alternatives, decision criteria, and focused analytical workplans.
Identify the questions that matter most rather than accepting a predetermined scope.
Lead high-priority strategic initiatives.
Independently lead cross-enterprise strategy efforts sponsored by the CEO, Executive Team, or Vice President, Enterprise Strategy—from initial framing through recommendation and executive decision.
Topics may include growth strategy, business-model evolution, new-market entry, technology disruption, competitive response, enterprise capability choices, or other major strategic questions.
Build a trusted enterprise fact base.
Integrate market models, customer insight, competitive intelligence, scientific and technology perspectives, internal performance, and financial analysis.
Pressure-test assumptions, distinguish evidence from organizational opinion, and partner with specialist teams while remaining accountable for the overall strategic conclusion.
Develop alternatives and make trade-offs explicit.
Create credible strategic options rather than presenting a single predetermined answer.
Quantify growth, investment, risk, organizational requirements, and opportunity cost where possible, and recommend what Illumina should start, stop, accelerate, deprioritize, or sequence differently.
Integrate enterprise perspectives.
Draw on relevant functional and regional expertise while preserving an independent enterprise point of view.
Surface disagreement and resolve it through evidence, transparent assumptions, and clear decision logic rather than superficial consensus.
Advise senior leadership.
Develop concise, decision-ready materials for the Executive Team and Board.
Facilitate executive discussions, communicate with judgment and credibility, challenge senior leaders constructively, and help leadership converge on decisions.
Develop strategy talent and institutional capability.
Lead and coach multi-level project teams, including Directors, Associate Directors, and other contributors.
Raise the quality of problem solving, analysis, synthesis, executive communication, and project leadership, and establish reusable approaches for enterprise-level strategy questions.
Support decision follow-through.
Translate strategic decisions into clear implications, owners, milestones, and measures of value.
Help identify when assumptions have changed or leadership intervention is required, while keeping implementation accountability with business, functional, and transformation leaders.