Executive Director, Cancer Vaccine Neoantigen Engineering — Early Infectious Disease

The Executive Director will build deep capabilities to master the rules governing antigen processing, pMHC presentation, and TCR recognition, integrating genomic, transcriptomic, immunopeptidomic, structural, and TCR repertoire data to understand what makes an antigen naturally presented, immunologically visible, and capable of driving functional tumor-cell killing. These insights will establish predictive design principles for epitope selection and immunogen engineering. A major focus will be developing innovative antigen-cassette architectures that robustly induce cellular immunity. Designs will seek to balance immunodominance, coordinate CD8⁺ cytotoxicity with CD4⁺ T-cell help, minimize antigen escape, and maximize the magnitude, breadth, polyfunctionality, cytotoxicity and persistence of vaccine-induced T-cell responses.

The Executive Director will establish an integrated antigen-engineering engine connecting computational design with experimental validation and iterative optimization. Working across immunology, oncology, computational sciences, protein engineering, and translational sciences, the role will build differentiated capabilities and intellectual property in engineered immunogens, multi-antigen cassette architectures, immune-routing strategies, and sequence-design algorithms, creating a scalable platform for the predictive design of best-in-class cancer vaccines.

Accountabilities

• Establish a best-in-class epitope discovery, validation, and engineering pipeline
• Optimize epitope sequence design and create a multi-antigen architectural design tool
• Engineer antigen expression constructs that maximize T cell breadth, clonal expansion, and durability
• Create differentiated intellectual property around epitope design and antigen construct architecture
• Work with cross-disciplinary teams to guide iterative antigen design and preclinical evaluation
• Establish strategic relationships across the organization and functions
• Build group and expertise around the design of vaccine candidates taking into account target antigens and target indications
• Create and foster effective relationships with senior and executive stakeholders in Research, Bioprocess Development, Clinical and Translational Medicine and Global Project Teams to ensure alignment across functions
• Pioneer AI based strategies to accelerate the pace of innovation at all levels of research
• Collaborate and guide the evaluation of novel business development opportunities
• Communicate results internally and externally, as well as their associated risks, uncertainties and limitations
• Define the training standards for junior colleagues in line with best practices and principles

Essentials

• PhD or equivalent in bioinformatics, immunology, oncology, molecular biology, biochemistry or a related discipline with 10+ yrs industry experience
• Proven experience developing vaccines to target different antigens in a variety of disease settings
• Proven experience with generating multiple vaccine constructs and testing constructs to identify optimal design of vaccine candidates
• Experience working in a cross-functional team to maximize expertise and accelerate success
• Experience developing and implementing novel methods to support vaccine development
• Experience supporting or leading interdisciplinary vaccine discovery or development programs
• Proven experience leading and managing junior colleagues
• Proven experience developing and controlling budgets
• Excellent written and verbal communication, business analysis, and consultancy skills