Head of Scientific Programs

Parallel Bio•San Francisco, CA

20h

About The Position

At Parallel Bio, we are leveraging the human immune system to unlock safer, more effective drugs. We believe immunotherapies are the future of medicine, but their discovery is hindered by outdated models that fail to capture the complexity of the human immune system. Our platform overcomes these challenges by combining best-in-class human immune organoids with massive scale and advanced computational methods, including AI and machine learning. This allows us to generate unprecedented, population-scale insights into human health and disease. We can rapidly discover new drugs that we know will work in patients from the start and understand how they will perform across an entire population—something not possible with today's technology. This knowledge will allow us to engineer therapies that will work for as many people as possible, ensuring a safe and effective cure for everyone. We are a fast-paced, venture-backed company at a pivotal moment of growth. Join us on our journey as we create new tools to push the boundaries of what is possible. The Role We are looking for a scientist who is most energized by making things work. Someone with the analytical rigor to challenge team leads on their reasoning, the breadth to operate across biological domains without needing to be the expert in any one of them, and the operational instincts to convert strategy into delivered results across a distributed, multi-site team. This person will serve as the primary day-to-day leader of the scientific function. It is a scientific leadership position with real authority over how the team operates, who is on it, and what it delivers. This is a role with genuine ownership over the scientific operation of a company built around a proprietary biological platform and a patient biobank that no one else has. You will have real authority over hiring, team structure, and how the operation runs. This is a company where the people around you are invested in your growth, not just your output.

Requirements

A strong instinct for experimental design. You tend to ask whether an experiment is structured to answer the question it claims to answer before asking what the answer might be. You think about controls, confounds, and interpretability across domains, not just within your own.
Experience evaluating scientific work outside your own area of training. This role requires making decisions about programs spanning immunology, translational biology, biobanking, and analytical technology development. Intellectual range and the ability to assess reasoning across unfamiliar domains matter more than depth in any one of them.
A track record of delivering, not just planning. When you describe your career highlights, they are things you built, shipped, or delivered. You tend to be the person who asks "so who is actually going to make this happen" when a plan is finished.
Candor and confidence with leadership. You flag problems early, push back on reasoning that does not hold up, and hold your position when you believe you are right.
Comfort operating under genuine ambiguity. You have made consequential decisions without complete information and found that energizing rather than paralyzing.
Deep grounding in immunology, developed through translational or drug development work. You understand the biology well enough to evaluate whether an experimental approach is asking the right question of the immune system, not just executing a protocol correctly. That understanding is also what earned you the credibility to lead scientists, and you have used it to coach, build teams, and create the systems that make good science repeatable.
A PhD in a life sciences discipline.
Deep experience in immunology, with translational or drug development exposure
8+ years of experience in biotech, pharma, or related life sciences environments, with progressive responsibility in scientific operations or team leadership.
Experience in platform, tools, or multi-asset biology environments.
Experience coordinating work across multiple sites, functions, or organizational boundaries.

Responsibilities

Shape scientific direction.
Evaluate whether programs are asking the right questions, not just executing correctly.
Identify when findings connect across programs in ways that team leads may not see from within their own domains.
Contribute to decisions about where to invest scientific effort and when to change course.
Hold teams accountable to scientific rigor and delivery.
Review experimental designs, data interpretations, and program decisions with enough depth to know when reasoning is sound and when it is not.
Lead and build a growing scientific team.
Manage approximately 15 scientists across multiple sites and disciplines.
Hire, develop, and retain talent.
Build the norms, systems, and culture that define how the team works together as it scales.
Drive execution across sites.
Coordinate day-to-day operations across Watertown, San Francisco, and Vienna.
Translate strategic goals into concrete work packages, ensure people understand why their work matters, and keep programs on timeline.
Operate across functions.
Interface with Automation, AI, and Software Engineering teams on shared technical priorities.
Support government and business development activities where scientific context is needed.
Help manage partner collaborations and contract deliverables that depend on scientific execution.
Own resource allocation and operational infrastructure.
Allocate budget, personnel, and lab capacity against competing priorities.
Design the reporting structures, meeting rhythms, and communication systems that keep a distributed team aligned.
Flag risks early.