Associate Director, Engineering Operations

GRAIL is a healthcare company whose mission is to detect cancer early, when it can be cured. GRAIL is focused on alleviating the global burden of cancer by developing pioneering technology to detect and identify multiple deadly cancer types early. The company is using the power of next-generation sequencing, population-scale clinical studies, and state-of-the-art computer science and data science to enhance the scientific understanding of cancer biology, and to develop its multi-cancer early detection blood test. GRAIL is headquartered in Menlo Park, CA with locations in Washington, D.C., North Carolina, and the United Kingdom. It is supported by leading global investors and pharmaceutical, technology, and healthcare companies. For more information, please visit www.grail.com.

As the Associate Director of Engineering Operations, you will lead a key operations team that oversees technical engineering support for a variety of process automation hardware, software applications and laboratory instruments to support smooth production lab operations. Working cross-functionally with Operations, R&D, Finance and Software groups you will drive a robust high throughput sample processing operations with your leadership of a team of talented system and equipment engineers. The successful candidate will be a scientist or engineer with a proven track record of supporting complex systems as well as implementing continuous process improvements in a regulated production setting.

You Will:

• Build and manage a team of engineers with the diverse scientific and technical skills required to support, troubleshoot and improve complex automation systems in a regulated environment
• Establish a world class support team to address issues in a timely manner and maximize the system up time for 24x7 operations
• Provide guidance and priorities to implement process optimization to improve efficiency, throughput and robustness.
• Establish operational objectives and work plans, delegate and empower team members
• Oversee service contracts and CAPEX spends for operations group
• Work closely with Quality and regulatory to implement and follow the required policies and procedures for system qualification, maintenance
• Work closely with Operations team and finance on planning equipment and resource needs for scale up to meet capacity requirements
• Work together with R&D and software for successful technology transfer and further workflow improvements
• Support engineering and automation needs of operations group
• Stay abreast of technological advances that can be implemented to drive process improvement, throughput, and cost

Your Background Will Include:

• B.S. Degree in Life Sciences, Engineering or related field.
• 10 years of industry experience in biotechnology with at least 5 years of resource and people management experience.
• 7 years of combined experience in automation and engineering in a regulated production setting
• Experience supporting high throughput production laboratories
• Experience managing cross functional projects and implementing new workflows
• Experience programming automated liquid handlers (Hamilton, Beckman Biomek, Tecan, etc.)
• Proven track record building and leading engineering teams
• Experience with LIMS and software integration
• Effective organizational and time management skills
• Excellent oral and written communication skills

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

GRAIL, Inc. and its affiliates and subsidiaries ("GRAIL") does not accept any liability for fees for resumes from recruiters or employment agencies ("Agency"), without a binding, written recruitment agreement between GRAIL and Agency describing the services and specific job openings ("Agreement"). GRAIL may consider any candidate for whom an Agency has submitted an unsolicited resume and explicitly reserves the right to hire those candidate(s) without any financial obligation to the Agency, unless an Agreement is in place. Any email or verbal contacts with any person within GRAIL is inadequate to create a binding agreement. Agencies without an Agreement are requested not to contact any hiring managers of GRAIL with recruiting inquiries or resumes. Agencies interested in partnering with GRAIL may contact GRAIL's HR Department through our Customer Service team .