Staff Scientist / Manager

Position Summary:

As a Manager/Staff Scientist in the Applications and Customer Enablement (ACE) team, you will provide leadership for a team of scientists supporting strategic customer engagements across the region. You will be responsible for guiding priorities, coordinating cross-functional activities, and ensuring successful delivery of customer-focused workflow solutions. Working closely with regional and global partners, you will help shape strategy, represent the ACE team within the region, and drive execution of key initiatives that accelerate adoption of Illumina technologies and workflows.

Position Responsibilities:

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of scientists, fostering a collaborative and high-performing culture.

• Provide leadership in workflow integration, automation, informatics, and LIMS-enabled solutions, ensuring effective coordination across technical disciplines.

• Partner with the ACE leadership team to define priorities, align resources, and execute regional and global objectives.

• Represent the ACE team within the region, acting as the primary point of coordination between commercial, product development, bioinformatics, operations, and customer-facing teams.

• Drive planning, execution, tracking, and communication of customer projects and internal development initiatives.

• Ensure effective prioritisation and execution of activities within a matrixed organisation, balancing customer commitments, strategic objectives, and team capacity.

• Partner closely with commercial and BioInsights teams to support strategic customer engagements and successful adoption of Illumina workflow solutions.

• Build and maintain relationships with key customers, collaborators, and key opinion leaders (KOLs) to understand needs and identify opportunities for partnership and growth.

• Translate customer and regional requirements into clear feedback and recommendations for product development and other internal stakeholders.

• Support the definition and deployment of reference workflows spanning laboratory, automation, informatics, and LIMS components.

• Provide leadership and oversight for workflow implementation, ensuring alignment across technical teams and project stakeholders.

• Present team capabilities, project outcomes, and strategic initiatives to internal and external audiences.

• Identify opportunities for innovation, operational improvement, and expanded adoption of Illumina technologies.

• Support customer engagements, training activities, and collaborative projects, including occasional travel.

Listed responsibilities are an essential, but not exhaustive list, of the usual duties associated with the position. Changes to individual responsibilities may occur due to business needs.

Position Requirements:

• Demonstrated leadership and people management experience in a customer-facing scientific, technical, or product development environment.

• Strong understanding of genomics workflows and relevant areas such as NGS, automation, LIMS, bioinformatics, and data analysis.

• Experience leading complex technical projects and aligning priorities across multiple teams in a matrixed organisation.

• Knowledge of high-throughput laboratory and informatics processes, workflow integration, and process improvement.

• Understanding of genomics and emerging omics applications, including proteomics, epigenetics, and spatial biology, is desirable.

• Strong strategic thinking and problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate customer and business needs into actionable plans.

• Excellent communication, influencing, and stakeholder management skills.

• Ability to communicate effectively across organisational levels, technical disciplines, geographies, and with external customers and partners.

• Experience building collaborative relationships with customers, key opinion leaders, and cross-functional teams.

• Ability to balance multiple priorities, manage ambiguity, and deliver results in a fast-paced environment.

All listed requirements are deemed as essential functions to this position; however, business conditions may require reasonable accommodation for additional tasks and responsibilities.

Preferred Experience/Education/Skills:

• Experience leading projects, initiatives, or teams within a scientific or technical environment; prior people management experience is advantageous.

• Typically requires a PhD or equivalent experience in a scientific, engineering, bioinformatics, or related discipline.