Director, Laboratory Automation

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Job Description:

We are searching for the best talent for a Director, Laboratory Automation to be based in Spring House, PA or Malvern, PA.

Purpose:

The Therapeutics Development & Supply (TDS) organization is responsible for the development, clinical supply, marketed product support, and lifecycle management of innovative biotherapeutics, including cell and gene therapies.

The Director, Laboratory Automation in Cell & Gene Therapy will lead a multidisciplinary organization responsible for defining and executing the automation strategy for analytical and process development. This leader will drive the transformation from automated workflows to highly integrated, digitally connected, hands-free laboratory operations that accelerate development timelines, increase capacity, improve quality, reduce errors and enhance scientific decision-making through agentic, closed-loop learning.

The successful candidate will provide strategic leadership for assay automation, robotics integration, orchestration, digitalization, automated and agentic automation workflows, and next-generation automation technologies.

This role will partner closely with Scientific Development, Process Development, Data Science, Digital & Technology, Engineering & Property Services, Supply Chain, Safety and external technology partners to design, deploy, and scale innovative autonomous laboratory solutions across the global development network.

The Director will be responsible for developing long-term automation roadmaps, building scalable, organizational capabilities, and ensuring automation platforms are reliable, robust and support both current business needs and future autonomous laboratory capabilities.

You Will Be Responsible For:

Strategic Leadership

• Developing and executing the long-term laboratory automation and robotics strategy across development laboratories.

• Establishing multi-year automation roadmaps aligned with organizational priorities and future-state digital laboratory ambitions.

• Driving the adoption of innovative automation, robotics, AI-enabled automed equipment control, and next generation laboratory orchestration technologies.

• Identifying opportunities to accelerate learning, increase capacity, reduce cycle time, improve quality, and decrease manual laboratory operations.

Technical Leadership

• Leading the design, development, deployment, and lifecycle management of integrated laboratory automation systems.

• Overseeing implementation of end-to-end automated and orchestrated workflows across multiple platforms including semantics and automation ontology.

• Driving architecture decisions for liquid handling, robotics, laboratory scheduling systems, laboratory orchestration platforms, and agentic and automated data systems.

• Leading evaluation, selection, and implementation of new automation technologies and strategic vendor partnerships.

• Ensuring robust technical governance, standardization, and scalability across automation platforms.

• Lead strategy for diagnosis and resolution of complex, cross-platform automation failures spanning equipment, software, networks, infrastructure and enterprise technology environments.

• Establish resilient automation architectures incorporating system monitoring, centralized logging, configuration management, cybersecurity, backup/recovery, change control and business continuity.

Organizational Leadership

• Building and leading a high-performing organization of automation leaders, automation engineers, software engineers, robotics specialists, and laboratory scientists.

• Developing talent and succession plans while fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.

• Providing leadership across multiple functional teams and matrix organizations.

• Supporting capability development strategies to ensure long-term organizational competitiveness.

Digital & Data Integration

• Partnering with Digital & Technology, and Data Science teams to establish connected laboratory ecosystems.

• Driving integration between laboratory automation systems, LIMS, ELN, MES, data lakes, analytics platforms, and AI-enabled solutions.

• Enabling automated data capture, contextualization, visualization, and scientific insight generation.

• Supporting development of autonomous and self-optimizing laboratory capabilities.

Compliance & Quality

• Ensuring laboratory automation systems comply with safety and regulatory requirements.

Qualifications:

Required:

• A minimum of a Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Biological Sciences, Biochemistry, Computer Science, Automation Engineering, Robotics, or related scientific discipline required. Advanced degree (MS, MBA, or PhD) is preferred.

• Minimum 10 years of relevant laboratory automation, engineering, scientific, or technology experience.

• Minimum 5 years of leadership experience managing technical and scientific teams.

• Experience implementing large-scale, orchestrated automation programs within biotechnology, pharmaceutical, or healthcare.

• Must have a minimum of two years working with AI-enabled equipment control, with demonstrated direct experience with automated optimization, and autonomous decision-making.

• Demonstrated experience developing and deploying multi-workflow, hands-free integrated and orchestrated laboratory automation systems.

• Experience with liquid handling platforms, robotics systems, orchestration software, and laboratory scheduling solutions.

• Experience integrating automation systems with enterprise digital and data platforms.

• Demonstrated ability to influence and lead across complex matrix organizations.

• Strong business acumen and ability to align technology investments with strategic outcomes.

• Excellent communication, presentation, and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred

• Experience supporting cell therapy, gene therapy, biologics, or advanced therapeutic modalities.

• Experience with advanced analytics, automation digital twins, autonomous laboratory technologies.

Johnson & Johnson is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or other characteristics protected by federal, state or local law. We actively seek qualified candidates who are protected veterans and individuals with disabilities as defined under VEVRAA and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Johnson & Johnson is committed to providing an interview process that is inclusive of our applicants’ needs. If you are an individual with a disability and would like to request an accommodation, external applicants please contact us via https://www.jnj.com/contact-us/careers, internal employees contact AskGS to be directed to your accommodation resource.

This job posting is anticipated to close on Nov 24 2026. We may however extend this time period, in which case the posting will remain available on www.careers.jnj.com to accept additional applications.

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