Head of Technical Programs

Role Description

We are looking for a mission-driven individual to manage our technical projects. 

You will partner with technical leads & architects to ensure we deliver our most critical projects on time and collaborate with leadership to ensure the projects are properly resourced, scoped and supported to be set up for success. You are ultimately responsible for holding project leads accountable to these timelines. 

You serve as a bridge between cross-functional project teams, senior leadership, and the broader team to ensure consistent, clear, and efficient communication. You ensure issues are surfaced, get clear proposals in place and synthesize key enterprise decisions required. Where needed, you’ll define containment strategies and set up task forces to keep things moving ahead. 

You will assist in the transition from a research focused organization to a commercial organization by focusing resources on core commercial requirements and key projects on the critical path, including but not limited to:  

• Ensuring projects are meeting regulatory requirements e.g. ensuring all teams are correctly documenting results, experiments and contact articles
• Identifying which levers have the most impact on product quality or price point and understanding the trade offs.
• Managing and maintaining a pipeline of technical projects, helping the organization prioritize resources to best hit commercial outcomes
• Collaborate with leadership to develop enterprise and technical roadmaps – and continually evolve them as new project outcomes and data surfaces
• Act as a project manager for the most critical cross team projects within the team, hosting a regular forum where leadership and project teams can productively discuss project successes and challenges
• Partner with technical leads to prepare, plan and track key milestones in project timelines ensuring projects are properly scoped and resourced for. 
• Rapidly act on new information that might require project re-scoping, disbanding, or changes of any nature
• Identify barriers and risk, clearly communicating where co-development or corporate partnerships could aid in the project delivery. 
• Work in close alignment with scientific, operational and product teams. 

Through personal example, and by setting up processes and systems, you level up the entire team's project management capacity and ensure that risks and opportunities are surfaced promptly. Whilst initially the candidate will be responsible for working independently, we are looking to hire an individual who can scale and manage a team of project managers.  

Some things about you

• Results oriented and self-assured, you have the ability to push timelines while keeping the team motivated through excellent communication and strong relationships building.
• Thinking further ahead than most, you identify risks and issues early and address them proactively. 
• Critical, independent thinker who surfaces and challenges assumptions and connects the dots. Comfortable with researching and understanding a wide variety of domain areas.
• Strong affinity with the product and the mission.
• Rapidly act on new information that might require project re-scoping, disbanding, or changes of any nature.
• Demonstrated experience successfully managing a portfolio of technical, multidisciplinary projects in line with organizational priorities. You provide clear choices and proposed directions based on a deep understanding of the technical foundation, as well as the organizational goals 
• Natural tendency and demonstrated ability to bring structure, surface assumptions, drive prioritization and help teams articulate a clear technical strategy. 
• Natural mentor/coach, you invest in growing people to help lift up the team.

What you need to succeed

• 10 years of experience in portfolio, product and/or program management of highly technical, multidisciplinary projects with demonstrated impact on company mission.
• 5 years experience within cultured meat or biopharmaceuticals. 
• Project management certification 
• Experience managing projects across teams of technical leads and/or project managers with a minimum project team size of 30 people

• Experience in drafting and updating technical roadmaps to align stakeholders across functions and delivering on key project success criteria.
• Highly desirable: 
• BSc, MSc or PhD in Biology, Biochemistry or related field
• Have experience in the commercial or product functions of a biotechnology company.
• Has experience working at startups/scaleups
• Experience communicating and updating executive teams on project risk, resourcing requirements and timelines

Salary Range: $150.000-200.000 base salary