Senior Manager, Scientific Engagement

Purpose

The Senior Manager, Scientific Engagement will lead regional scientific sourcing and engagement in South San Francisco, performing first-pass scientific triage and designing targeted outreach programs that generate high-quality external opportunities for therapeutic-area, DPDS, and partnering teams. This senior individual contributor translates priorities into scalable regional strategies that improve identification, triage, and progression of high-potential external opportunities. Unlike an event- or marketing-led engagement role, this position serves as a scientifically credible front door to the external ecosystem. The Senior Manager independently assesses inbound and proactively sourced opportunities, distinguishes strategically relevant science from lower-priority opportunities, identifies critical data gaps and diligence questions, and directs the strongest opportunities to the appropriate therapeutic-area, DPDS, Search & Evaluation, incubation, or partnering stakeholders. The role also designs and leads high-impact scientific programs and engagements that generate actionable opportunity flow, market intelligence, and strategic relationships. The Senior Manager operates across multiple therapeutic areas and functions, manages complex and ambiguous work with limited oversight, influences senior internal and external stakeholders without direct authority, and establishes scalable regional practices and metrics. The position is accountable for recommendations, quality of scientific triage, engagement outcomes, budget stewardship, compliance, and continuous improvement of the regional scientific engagement model.

Responsibilities

• Owning the regional scientific engagement strategy and annual activation plan aligned to therapeutic-area and DPDS priorities.
• Performing first-pass scientific and strategic triage of companies, platforms, technologies, and academic innovations, and providing concise recommendations.
• Designing and running targeted engagements (forums, roundtables, partnerships, targeted sourcing) that produce actionable opportunity flow.
• Building and maintaining strategic external relationships with startups, academia, incubators, and investors.
• Leading end-to-end delivery of priority engagements, including vendor/contractor oversight.
• Maintaining opportunity, campaign, relationship, and outcome data in Salesforce and producing regular stakeholder reports.
• Managing program budgets, prioritizing resources, and escalating trade-offs.
• Ensuring compliance with legal, privacy, financial, and records-management requirements and influencing cross-functional stakeholders without direct authority.

Qualifications/Requirements

• PhD in a relevant scientific discipline plus a minimum of 8 years of total professional experience (including leadership/people-management); OR Master's degree plus a minimum of 10 years of total professional experience (including leadership/people-management) is required.
• Relevant experience includes drug discovery/development, scientific evaluation, translational research, venture/technology scouting, partnering, or related roles.
• Demonstrated ability to conduct scientific triage and early technical assessment of external opportunities is required.
• Proven ownership of complex scientific programs from planning through execution is required.
• Strong scientific writing, verbal communication, and scientific storytelling or PR/communications experience is required.
• Proven ability to influence senior leaders and cross-functional teams without direct authority is required.
• Experience managing multiple high-priority workstreams, budgets, vendors, and stakeholders is required.
• Maintaining accurate opportunity and engagement data in CRM systems (Salesforce) and producing engagement reports is required.
• Familiarity with applicable legal, compliance, privacy, and financial governance processes is required.
• Prior experience supporting technical due diligence and routing opportunities into Search & Evaluation, incubation, or partnering pathways is preferred.
• Experience developing innovation landscapes, target/technology assessments, or scientific briefs is preferred.
• Experience engaging with startups, investors, incubators, or academic technology transfer offices is preferred.
• Experience overseeing vendors/contractors and establishing scalable processes, templates, or measurement frameworks is preferred.
• Experience using Salesforce analytics or similar CRM reporting to measure engagement outcomes is preferred.
• Willingness to travel up to 25% is required.