Sr. Scientist Virology

With operations in 35+ nations and ~27,000 employees worldwide, CSL is driven to develop and deliver a broad range of lifesaving therapies to treat disorders such as hemophilia and primary immune deficiencies, and vaccines to prevent influenza. Our therapies are also used in cardiac surgery, organ transplantation and burn treatment.

CSL is the parent company of CSL Behring and Seqirus. CSL Behring is a global leader in the protein biotherapeutics industry, focused on bringing to market biotherapies used to treat serious and often rare conditions. CSL Behring operates CSL Plasma, one of the world's largest collectors of human plasma, which is used to create CSL’s therapies. Seqirus is one of the largest influenza vaccine companies in the world and is a transcontinental partner in pandemic preparedness and a major contributor to the prevention and control of influenza globally.

We invite you to take a look at the many career possibilities available around the globe and consider building your promising future at CSL by becoming a member of our team!

Job Summary:

The individual provides leadership for a team of scientific staff and serves as a subject matter expert responsible for oversight of screening and development of candidate vaccine viruses for seasonal and pre-pandemic vaccine manufacture to Operations. Supports projects that will drive future growth through process improvements.  Uses scientific knowledge to ensure proper study design, accurate data analysis, and facilitates measurable benefits.  Leads and drives elements of these activities as required.  

Major Responsibilities:
Process and Product Development:

• Represents Technical Development and interphases with Operations to develop antigenically relevant candidate vaccine viruses (CVVs) for the manufacture of seasonal and pandemic influenza vaccines.
• Manages collaborations with WHO collaborating centres for acquisition and antigenic characterization of influenza CVVs.
• Monitors influenza seasonal surveillance, communicates risk-based assessment to key stake holders, and makes recommendations for the development of influenza CVVs.
• Leads TD Virology scientific team responsible for identifying appropriate CVVs for manufacturing by prioritizing virus groups of antigenic relevance for high throughput screening.
• Represent TD on cross-functional teams related to flu cell culture based vaccine commercial campaign.
• Functions effectively as core team member on multiple concurrent projects and leads small projects and establishes work processes.
• Proactively identifies development and improvement opportunities, generates a supportive business case, and supports cross-functional teams to deliver those opportunities.
• Uses a data driven approach to progress development deliverables.
• Responsible for using scientific knowledge to support site/global projects.

People Management:

• Direct supervisor for a team of 3-4.
• Provides ongoing performance feedback to direct reports.
• Provides scientific/technical guidance and mentorship to TD Virology team.
• Models a culture of safety, ensures team adheres to requirements, and identifies and implements improvements.
• Maintains a state of compliance for team through regular review of training and implementing training curricula improvements.
• Serves as subject matter expert and general scientific resource for colleagues with less experience.

Operations/Quality Support:

• Serves as interface between TD and Operations by representing TD department in cross-functional forums and informing stakeholder of key information to support manufacturing.
• Utilizes knowledge and experience of Virology to provide technical support for production of drug substance in GMP manufacturing.
• Uses scientific and statistical knowledge to support product, process and testing related investigations and deviations including complaint, deviation, OOE and OOS investigations that require support TD.

Other:

• Generates data summaries and presents project progress for internal audiences and key stakeholders in other groups (Operations, MS&T, QC). 
• Completes all individual training and maintains a state of compliance.
• Adheres to all safety requirements.
• This position will directly manage the screening and identification of appropriate candidate vaccine viruses to ensure successful cell culture-based vaccine production as required and defined in annual objectives or through agreement with direct line manager.

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor's or master’s degree or PhD in related scientific field
• 5+ years relevant industry experience and/or equivalent experience in a relevant academic environment
• Requires in-depth conceptual and practical expertise in own technical or scientific discipline (focus on virology, virus surveillance, and/or epidemiology).
• Technical expertise in virology, influenza virology strongly preferred.
• Experience with cell culture.
• Experience with influenza reverse genetic/synthetic techniques.
• Proactively owns and drives assigned tasks to completion.
• Ability to present solutions to complex and strategic issues.
• Effective delivery of objective in a complex matrix environment.
• Experience writing content for technical documentation including SOPs, work instructions and technical presentations.
• Ability to quickly respond to rapidly changing priorities.
• Flexible and adaptable attitude with the ability to support change management.
• Strong attention to detail.
• Effective verbal & written communication skills in a cross functional environment.
• Experience presenting complex technical concepts to a wide range of audiences of varying technical depth.
• Demonstrated Lominger competencies in ethics and values, integrity and trust, decisions quality, functional/technical skills, peer relationships, developing direct reports, perseverance and problem solving.
• Experience with direct reports; managing teams of individual scientific/technical contributors (i.e. scientists, engineers) strongly preferred.
• Ability to lead, drive and motivate people to achieve goals.
• Ability to support and foster a diverse and multicultural group.
• Model and promote CSL/Seqirus values.