Senior Director, Software Engineering, Science

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was founded by Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg in 2015 to help solve some of societys toughest challenges from eradicating disease and improving education to addressing the needs of our local communities. Our mission is to build a more inclusive just and healthy future for everyone.

The Team

CZI supports the science and technology that will make it possible to cure prevent or manage all diseases by the end of this century. While this may seem like an audacious goal in the last 100 years biomedical science has made tremendous strides in understanding biological systems advancing human health and treating disease.

We build opensource software tools to accelerate science and generate more accurate and biologically important sources of data. We fund scientific research worldwide to advance the frontiers of knowledge. And we launched a family of institutes to do research that cant be done in conventional environments. Each aspect is essential to our approach to building for the long term.

CZIs work in science includes grantmaking programs opensource software development and close collaboration with its partner institutes at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network. The CZ Biohub Network includes the San Francisco Chicago and New York Biohubs as well as the Chan Zuckerberg Imaging Institute. CZI also collaborates with institutional partners like the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural & Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University. Join us in accelerating science.

The CZI AI/ML team is funding and building one of thelargest computing systems dedicated to nonprofit life science research in the world. This new effort will provide the scientific community with access to predictive models of healthy and diseased cells which will lead to groundbreaking new discoveries that could help researchers cure prevent or manage all diseases by the end of this century. You will collaborate directly with the AI/ML team responsible for developing and deploying ML models that use data developed by CZI and research partners all for the purpose of contributing to greater understanding of human cell function

The Opportunity

This is an excellent opportunity for an outstanding technical leader inspired by CZIs mission with a passion for the potential of technology to enable organizations to operate effectively including accelerating scientific progress and applying technology to enable new science.

As a Senior Director of Engineering focusing on AI platform and application development your role will be to spearhead and guide the development of cuttingedge technologies and solutions. You will lead the identification of key challenges and opportunities for accelerating science through developing and disseminating AI applications fostering innovation and efficiency improvements in existing processes while creating novel solutions. Your responsibility extends to formulating and driving the Science teams overarching vision and strategy for technology development collaborating with Scientific leadership across CZI to advance the Science mission.

The ideal candidate for this position will have a demonstrable history of successfully developing and implementing strategic plans for pioneering AI/ML and technology products leveraging data and customer insights to inform and refine technology decisions. This individual will have a proven ability to work collaboratively with internal teams and external partners effectively aligning efforts to meet business objectives and customer needs. The candidate should excel in navigating complex ambiguous environments demonstrating a strong capability in driving projects to completion and focusing on impactful outcomes rather than mere outputs. This role demands a passion for experimentation and exploration strategic as well as scaling up technology initiatives a demonstrated talent for leadership in the ML/AI domain and an unwavering commitment to achieving ambitious goals.

What Youll Do

• Leadership and Team Management: Provide engineering teams with leadership mentoring and management. Focus on developing and sustaining robust scalable AI platforms and capabilities.
• Crossfunctional collaboration: Through our partnerships with researchers and the scientific community and the work of our software team we create experiences tools and platforms that integrate research practices and content.
• Technical Vision and Strategy: Develop and implement a strategic technology roadmap for our Science initiative longterm visiontechnical platforms ensuring alignment with our organizational vision and objectives. Drive continuous innovation and the adoption of AI technologies to elevate product experiences.
• Technical Excellence: Uphold a standard of technical excellence ensuring adherence to best practices in software development machine learning and platform architecture.
• Trust and Security: Cultivate a culture of trust and ethical AI practices leading a team committed to deploying secure stateoftheart AI solutions that strictly comply with global data protection and privacy standards.
• Team Management and Mentorship: Lead a team of over 50 engineers managing resources timelines and project scopes. Provide mentorship to foster a collaborative and productive environment.
• ProblemSolving: Utilize AI/ML solutions to address complex realworld challenges applying theoretical knowledge to create and improve practical impactful products and services; we can create educational tools that better integrate research practices and content.
• Team Development and Recruitment: Focus on hiring building and developing a skilled team to meet organizational needs ensuring they have the required expertise and capabilities.
• Partner Collaboration: Collaborate with scientific leaders and technology developers within the Science ecosystem and partner organizations to develop frameworks data foundations and architectures supporting our strategic vision.

What Youll Bring

• Extensive Leadership Experience: Over 1015 years in technology leadership roles including experience leading engineering teams showcasing a successful track record in guiding and managing sizable multifaceted technology teams and a passion for innovation and scaling in scientific tools.
• Expertise in ML and AI: A deep understanding of machine learning and AI building infrastructure services and scalable technology stack.
• Communication and Interpersonal Skills: Exceptional communication ability; fosters effective collaboration and empathy with diverse organizational and external stakeholders. Ability to engage and motivate a distributed missionoriented technical team.
• Business Acumen and Strategic Alignment: Proficient in aligning technology strategies with the organizations broader business goals and objectives demonstrating strong business insight.
• Analytical and ProblemSolving Proficiency: Robust analytical skills coupled with the ability to solve complex technology challenges effectively.
• Multidisciplinary Team Experience: A history of working with and understanding the unique needs of organizations and teams across multiple disciplines showing a commitment to appreciating cultural structural and technical diversity.

Compensation

The Redwood City CA base pay range for this role is $323000$485000. New hires are typically hired into the lower portion of the range enabling employee growth in the range over time. Actual placement in range is based on jobrelated skills and experience as evaluated throughout the interview process.

Benefits for the Whole You

Were thankful to have an incredible team behind our work. To honor their commitment we offer a wide range of benefits to support the people who make all we do possible.

• CZI provides a generous employer match on employee 401(k) contributions to support planning for the future.
• Annual benefit for employees that can be used most meaningfully for them and their families such as housing student loan repayment childcare commuter costs or other life needs.
• CZI Life of Service Gifts are awarded to employees to live the mission and support the causes closest to them.
• Paid time off to volunteer at an organization of your choice.
• Funding for select familyforming benefits.
• Relocation support for employees who need assistance moving to the Bay Area
• And more!

If youre interested in a role but your previous experience doesnt perfectly align with each qualification in the job description we still encourage you to apply as you may be the perfect fit for this or another role.

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