Manager, Process Development and Automation, Accessioning and AI

Abbott is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans the spectrum of healthcare, with leading businesses and products in diagnostics, medical devices, nutritionals and branded generic medicines. Our 115,000 colleagues serve people in more than 160 countries.

     

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Position Overview

The Manager, Process Development and Automation leads the Accessioning domain within Preanalytical Engineering, with responsibility for Accessioning automation program definition and delivery across the Redwood City, Phoenix, and Marshfiled campuses. This role translates Abbott Cancer Diagnostics goals into the Long Range Plan (LRP), driving automation strategies that harmonize processes and platforms across sites where feasible, while applying sound judgment and collaboration to refine and optimize for assay-specific requirements where warranted. The role partners with Laboratory Operations, Operations Integration, PMO, IT, Enterprise Service and Integration, LIMS, and other stakeholders to translate business priorities into funded, executable programs. The Manager exercises technical leadership and is responsible for delivering these solutions to Lab Operations.

This role requires strong leadership presence and initiative, particularly the ability to take ownership of ambiguous or evolving scope, drive resolution across cross-functional and executive stakeholders under time pressure, and communicate clearly across technical and business audiences. The Manager drives adoption of AI applications and best practices to increase lab quality, scalability, and team productivity, and builds the team's capability to use AI safely and effectively in a regulated engineering environment.

Successful candidates bring practical, hands-on engineering experience and demonstrated technical capability combined with a demonstrated track record of driving initiatives to successful, on-time, on-budget delivery through proactive ownership and collaboration.

Essential Duties

Include but are not limited to the following:

• Provide leadership on best practices for the development of processes and products in a regulated environment.
• Lead the team in continuous improvement projects and support other areas’ needs dependent on demand.
• Coach, mentor, and raise the team's ability to deliver and exceed expectations while creating opportunities for team member development.
• Consistent demonstration of exceptional leadership qualities, including but not limited to the ability to attract and retain the best team, foster a culture of high performance, lead with integrity, humility, accountability, and courage, and set a clear vision to energize teams towards the future.  
• Effectively manage, support, and guide your team, including, but not limited to delegating tasks and responsibilities, assess employee performance and provide helpful feedback and training opportunities.
• Serve as a resource for employees by sharing and knowledge transfer of best practices for experiment design and execution.
• Ensure that any incoming support requests from outside of the normal channels are properly routed to ensure they are assigned and actively addressed. 
• Ensure that assigned support requests from cross-functional project teams or business units are being actively addressed.
• Assist and coordinate training methodology and training documentation in conjunction with other leadership.
• Provide mentoring and technical guidance to PDA engineers and scientists.
• Serve as the primary source of contact for PDA engineers or scientists and oversee day-to-day PDA engineer and scientist’s functionality.
• Work closely with instrument and automation support, technical service, and sustaining teams to provide design and service requirements and potential operational improvements.
• Support and comply with the company's Quality Management System policies and procedures.
• Uphold company mission and values through accountability, innovation, integrity, quality, and teamwork.
• Collaborate with multiple teams to determine root cause for production failures and works closely with technical services team to resolve issues.
• Identify and understand regulatory requirements to make sure the laboratory is in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations pertinent to the management of the laboratory, including applicable CLIA, CAP and other requirements and regulations such as California and New York (CLEP) laboratory programs."
• Maintain oversight for quality of mechanical work performed and of appropriate documentation.
• Provide information and suggestions to the appropriate resource(s) to improve company technical documentation and/or processes.
• Recommend and implement changes t