Facilities & Lab Manager

About Us

Astera is a private foundation on a mission to steer science and technology toward an abundant future for all. Our flagship Residency is a one-year program that supports extraordinary technologists who are producing public goods. As of July 2025, we have six residents from our first cohort working on projects that range from growing microbes that can exist on Mars to harnessing the anti-oxidant effects of fermented foods to designing open source telescopes. We support not only residents’ salaries, but also budgets for them to hire a team and meet other needs to accelerate their work. We also support the physical space needs of these residents: opened a life science lab earlier this year and are in the process of developing an engineering space. With our Residency program, we aim to create new pathways for brilliant scientists pursuing discoveries that don’t fit neatly into academia or industry.

Astera is uniquely positioned to shape the course of rapid scientific and technological innovation because of:

• A $2.5B endowment, which we intend to deploy boldly rather than preserve in perpetuity.

• A small, agile team: We are staffed much more leanly than other foundations, and aim to keep bureaucracy as minimal as possible. It's more accurate to think of us as a startup than a traditional foundation.

• High risk tolerance: We take an experimental approach to our programming that means we expect projects to fail with some frequency.

• Disinterest in consensus: we add value by supporting projects, programs, and people that other organizations can’t or won’t.

About the Role

We are seeking a mission- and culturally-aligned lab and facilities manager to support the evolving physical needs of our residents across diverse scientific disciplines. Cohorts rotate twice a year, and their needs can range from building a tissue culture space for a fermented foods project, to setting up optical experiments in a warehouse, to enabling a design studio.

The role includes frequent stakeholder management and communications, hands-on day-to-day facility management, equipment procurement, and management of vendors. Reporting to the COO, you’ll take ownership of two experimental spaces and partner closely with residents to help them succeed.

This role is ideal for someone with laboratory and/or workshop experience who is eager to broaden their skillset, thrives on solving novel problems, and is energized by enabling ambitious science.

Responsibilities

• Maintain laboratory and warehouse spaces, including equipment, utilities, repairs, office needs, and snacks.

• Maintain lines of communication with Astera leadership and residents to provide insight into the status of the lab facilities

• Work with the landlord on maintenance and tenant improvements.

• Work with science residents to outfit Astera facilities with new capabilities to meet the needs of new cohorts

• Lead medium- and long-term space planning to adapt to shifting program needs.

• Partner with new residents to identify solutions for their R&D space needs, both inside and outside of Astera facilities

• Oversee EH&S and emergency response planning.

• Flex to “unknown unknowns,” such as helping with maintenance at our main office (3 blocks away), covering when the office manager is out, or outfitting buildouts of new spaces.

Essential qualifications

1. Relevant work experience (likely 4+ years) in facilities management in a specific discipline, such as life science and/or electrical engineering.

2. A track record of comfort learning about new topics and interest in expanding your facilities management experience to new disciplines

3. Excellent communication and organizational skills

4. Experience ensuring regulatory compliance and safety (e.g. hazardous waste handling, fire and electrical hazards, emergency response planning, etc).

Preferred qualifications

We expect that competitive candidates may have additional qualifications that make them especially well suited to this role, potentially including:

1. Knowledge of procurement and maintenance of lab equipment and consumables

2. Workshop skills, e.g. 3D printing or assembling an Arduino project

3. Comfort with HVAC, electrical and plumbing

4. Experience navigating Bay Area regulations.

Example backgrounds that could be strong fit:

1. Running a multidisciplinary lab space or a maker space.

2. Serving as second-in-command in facilities and ready to step up into full ownership.

3. Having deep but narrow exp