Associate Director, Biotherapeutic Engineering & Bioconjugation

Role Summary

Associate Director of Biotherapeutic Engineering & Bioconjugation will join the Biologics Research Center (BRC) as a leader at the cutting edge of discovery and development of innovative medicines. The role focuses on engineering biologics and developing bioconjugates within the Biotherapeutic Engineering and Bioconjugate (BEC) group in San Diego, California. The BEC group drives a diverse portfolio of bioconjugates, therapeutic proteins, multifunctional antibodies and beyond, collaborating with Disease Area groups to extend biologics into therapeutic applications where conventional antibodies have limitations.

Responsibilities

• Leads a team of 4 labs and 15-20 subject matter experts on the San Diego site responsible to drive recombinant therapies to patients.
• Establishes mid- and long-term goals, plan of action and implementation for the BEC team (e.g. annual objectives) in line with BRC and BR strategy and objectives. Identifies and addresses obstacles to success both within and across departments.
• Integrating expertise from multiple sites and units, develops strategy and provides scientific leadership at a technical level in our core deliverable areas (Antibody Oligo Conjugates, Antibody Drug Conjugates, multispecifics).
• Represents BEC as BEC Site Head for San Diego including managing the budget of the BEC unit in collaboration with global counterparts in order to meet BRC targets.
• Sets strategy, implements and manages outsourcing for the local BEC team.
• Interfaces with downstream development colleagues to bring lead candidates towards full development.
• Collaborates and coordinates activities with other global BRC and BR units.
• Offers innovative approaches to scientific questions and troubleshoots efforts to develop recombinant protein and antibody-based therapeutics in immune cell engagers, regulated/activatable antibodies, multispecific antibodies, and ADCs and AOCs.
• Identifies Disease Area's unmet needs and collaborates for a novel therapeutic solution.
• Ensure compliance for contemporaneous and accurate documentation of scientific activities and for ethical, health and safety, and quality assurance metrics.

Qualifications

• Required: PhD with at least 10 years relevant experience as an expert in protein engineering.
• Required: Demonstrated ability to recruit, retain and develop diverse and agile associates with different expertise, seniority to ensure long term talent development and succession planning.
• Required: Background in leading and mentoring a research group consisting of associates of all levels and acting as a manager of managers.
• Required: Proficiency in antibody molecular biology, protein expression, purification, chemical modification, analytics, biophysical characterization, functional characterization and functional assay design and interpretation.
• Required: Familiarity with all aspects of antibody discovery, optimization, production, and transition to development/manufacturing groups.
• Required: Familiarity with preclinical and early clinical development of biotherapeutics. Awareness of biomarker development, clinical assays, manufacturing, safety profiling, and clinical trial design.
• Preferred: Prior experience with computational protein design/modelling and structure analysis as well as library-based approaches to attenuate function and developability properties of protein therapeutics.
• Preferred: Proven experience developing and innovating on mixed modality therapeutics. Expertise designing and optimizing Antibody-Oligo Conjugates is highly desired.
• Preferred: A demonstrated track record of success as judged by publications and patents.
• Preferred: Highly collaborative spirit inside and outside of department to advance programs to clinic; good communication skills, creativity, and multi-tasking in a fast-paced environment.
• Preferred: Ability to master new subjects and assess diverse scientific content related to the broader field of biologics drug discovery and development in a broad range of disease areas.