Director Bioanalytics Characterization

Job Title: Director Bioanalytics Characterization

Location: Framingham, MA

About the Job

Are you ready to shape the future of medicine? The race is on to speed up drug discovery and development to find answers for patients and their families. Your skills could be critical in helping our teams accelerate progress. Join our Bioanalytics Mammalian team as Director of Bioanalytics Characterization and you’ll be able to play a key role in supporting CMC biologics development at Sanofi.

The Director of the Characterization team will lead a group of approximately 20 scientists, whose main mission is to support the extended characterization testing of biologics (e.g. enzymes, antibodies, fusion proteins) from early-stage development (Phase I/II) through licensure. The Characterization team is responsible for performing the activities to support the elucidation of structure, reference standard characterization, comparability, host cell protein identification, as well as supporting CQA assessments through degradation pathway and in-depth variant characterization studies. This position resides within the Mammalian Bioanalytics group, which is part of the Global Biologics CMC Development organization at Sanofi, Framingham, MA.

We are looking for a skilled, highly motivated individual capable of taking on a leadership role in protein therapeutic development. The individual must have proven ability to manage a high performing scientific team and oversee characterization studies in line with regulatory expectations for biologics for all phases of development.

We are an innovative global healthcare company with one purpose: to chase the miracles of science to improve people’s lives. We’re also a company where you can flourish and grow your career, with countless opportunities to explore, make connections with people, and stretch the limits of what you thought was possible. Ready to get started?​

Main Responsibilities:

• Oversee all characterization activities required to support structure-function assessments of protein biologics including primary sequence verification, charge and size variant characterization, as well as the identification of impurities in accordance with regulatory expectations and internal Sanofi guidance documents. 

• Ensure compliance with environmental health and safety requirements. This includes, but is not limited to, employee training, documentation, equipment qualification, and data integrity.

• Provide strategic input and direction regarding the evaluation/implementation of new analytical technologies for the characterization of biologics and relevant impurities with an emphasis on state-of-the-art methods and techniques.

• Provide strong scientific mentorship to direct reports who have both managerial and CMC analytical project leadership roles. Provide characterization support for process and product development, cell line development and developability activities. Contribute to the authoring and review of CMC regulatory filings and responses to information requests. 

• Maintain a high level of employee engagement through training, career development initiatives, job rotations, mentoring, and alternating assignments.

• Provide strategic input and direction regarding capital equipment investment decisions for new equipment to ensure adequate capability and capacity is available to support state of the art characterization testing of mAbs, multispecific antibodies, fusion proteins, and enzymes

• Design and adapt characterization studies based on CQA knowledge, proposed process control strategies, as well as emerging industry trends

• Ensure compliance with data integrity requirements and documentation practices consistent with expectations for studies supporting regulatory filings

• Take a leading role in supporting Sanofi’s company-wide strategic analytical initiatives, including the authoring of guidance documents.

• Represent Sanofi through participation in industry forums, presenting at conferences and the preparation of high quality publications

About You

• Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Analytical Chemistry, or related discipline with at least 10 years of relevant experience working in the biotechnology/pharmaceutical industry, or a Master’s or