Senior Director, Gene Therapy

Ginkgo is a high-growth, well-capitalized public biotech company in Boston that is redesigning the living world to solve some of the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our mission to “make biology easier to engineer” is poised to disrupt multiple industries by leveraging our innovative data, automation, and scale in biological engineering.  Ginkgo has built a platform for "cell engineering" to use AI/ML tools for DNA design, long DNA synthesis and assembly, next-gen sequencing, automated culturing, assay development, high-throughput high-content screening to advance pre-clinical research and development as well as manufacturing process optimization across therapeutic modalities. 
Ginkgo is a partner driven company with over 100 programs running on the platform. We are seeking to enable drug-developers but have no designs to develop therapeutics ourselves. Within Ginkgo, the Mammalian Engineering team consists of a set of scientists and engineers with subject matter expertise across cell therapy, gene therapy, RNA therapeutics, and biologics. This team is responsible for translating challenges our partners have into actionable R&D programs that leverage the broader Ginkgo platform’s resources (aka the Foundry); and then manage and execute on those programs to deliver solutions on time and budget. Ginkgo has a number of public and confidential programs in gene therapy, including but not limited to improving AAV manufacturing with Biogen, AAV capsid engineering with Selecta Bio and improving strength and tissue specificity of promoters in GTx applications. We have also invested in novel promoter screening technology through acquisition of Circularis and AAV capsids through acquisition of StrideBio’s STRIVE platform for capsid discovery and engineering. As a partner-driven platform company we are not married to one modality and are generally interested in enabling any partner’s delivery strategy provided that engineering biology will help move the needle forward.
We are looking for a Senior Director, Gene Therapy to continue building and managing our portfolio of gene therapy programs. The ideal candidate will have had experiences both developing gene therapy platforms and driving preclinical and/or clinical programs with increasing leadership responsibilities throughout their career. The position requires a combination of deep technical understanding, general business acumen, project management skills, superior communication skills, and the ability to grow and lead scientific teams. This is a leadership role reporting to the VP of Mammalian Engineering.
Please note:  this role could be based in either our Seaport or Cambridge locations, but requires some flexibility to occasionally be present at the other location.
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Responsibilities:

• Leading and developing a team of scientists and engineers to deliver on programs across the gene therapy portfolio
• Support program leads (and in some cases lead programs) and drive accountability for program progress
• Develop and instill strong project management practices in the team
• Communicate project and team performance to leadership and external customers
• Work in conjunction with Ginkgo’s Commercial Team to directly interface with current and potential external partners to drive more programs on the platform.
• Use those conversations to understand gaps and opportunities for Ginkgo to help GTx developers. Formulate a strategy to address gaps or take advantage of opportunities through internal programs, licensing, acquisition, etc. that could drive significant value.
• Establish strong partnerships with Ginkgo’s Foundry teams to develop a strategy to scale the numbers of programs Ginkgo can support– through standardization, institution of processes, etc.
• Assist with shaping Ginkgo’s overall direction as a company and support its evolving needs, as necessary

Desired Experience and Capabilities:

• PhD in biology, bioengineering or related field 12+ years of research experience in biopharma R&D settings with at least 6 years industry experience in gene therapy
• Deep experience and technical leadership with tackling challenges in tropism, immunogenicity, manufacturability of gene delivery vectors -- through program success, publications, etc.
• Proven track record of leading and organizing