Associate Director, Operations

Broad Institute; Cambridge (MA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) retirement plan

Paid holidays

Job summary

The Broad Institute seeks an Associate Director of Software Engineering to lead the design, build, and operation of largescale infrastructure powering scientific discovery. You will blend agentic software engineering, data science, DevOps, and platform architecture to ensure workflows run reliably, efficiently, and at scale.

You will guide cross-disciplinary teams, translate research requirements into production systems, and set engineering best practices across CI/CD, IaC, containers, and cloud

Qualifications

• Agentic engineering fluency and proficiency with recent LLM ecosystems (e.g. Claude, Codex, Copilot).
• Significant time leading engineering teams in DevOps, SRE, or platform engineering roles.
• Experience overseeing design and delivery of high-scale distributed systems in AWS or GCP.
• Deep understanding of CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, containerization, and cloud-native operations.
• Experience with modern database systems (relational, document, graph, etc.).
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to nontechnical stakeholders.
• Proven track record of leading teams in fast-paced, cross-disciplinary environments.

Responsibilities

• Direct technical design and implementation for new agentic capabilities with focus on scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Guide teams to translate research requirements into robust production systems.
• Establish and enforce engineering best practices for agentic engineering, DevOps, observability, and cloud operations.
• Manage and mentor senior engineers while shaping long-term platform strategy.
• Lead a high-performing team, starting with 1-2 reports and scaling as funding allows.

Job description

The Broad Institute is building agentic AI systems to accelerate the work of scientists at the institute and across the world in fields such as genomics, genetics, virology, and more. This goal requires significant engineering expertise as we build infrastructure capable of supporting the workloads of AI co‑scientists. This exciting work will lay the foundation for scientific discovery loops where the massive data collection efforts at the Broad Institute are paired with AI systems to make observations, generate hypotheses, and design experiments that will enable us to learn fundamental biology at unprecedented scale.

Role Overview

The Associate Director drives the design, development, and operation of largescale infrastructure that powers the Broad Institute's scientific discovery and sharing. This role blends agentic software engineering, data science, DevOps, and platform architecture, ensuring that scientific workflows run reliably, efficiently, and at massive scale where required. The Associate Director, Software Engineering works closely with computational scientists, operations teams, and external collaborators to transform research prototypes into productiongrade systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Direct technical design and implementation for new agentic capabilities, ensuring scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Guide teams in collaborating with scientific and engineering teams to translate research requirements into robust production systems.
• Establish and enforce engineering best practices for agentic engineering and DevOps, observability, infrastructure automation, and cloud operations.
• Manage and mentor senior engineers while driving longterm platform strategy.
• Lead a high-performing team, directly managing 1-2 initial reports with the opportunity to scale the team as organizational funding permits

Required Qualifications

• Agentic engineering fluency and proficiency with recent LLM ecosystems (e.g. claude, Codex, Copilot)
• BS with 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant time leading engineering teams in DevOps, SRE, or platform engineering roles, or a Master's and 8+ years of related experience, or a PhD and 5+ years of related experience.
• 5+ years' management experience required.
• Demonstrated ability to oversee the design and delivery of highscale, distributed systems in cloud environments (AWS or GCP).
• Deep understanding of CI/CD pipelines, infrastructureascode, containerization, and cloudnative operations.
• Experience with modern database systems (relational, document, graph, etc.)
• Ability to align and communicate complex technical concepts to nontechnical stakeholders.
• Proven track record of leading teams effectively in fastpaced, crossdisciplinary environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading initiatives that support scientific computing, bioinformatics workflows, or largescale data processing pipelines.
• Experience overseeing the integration of heterogeneous systems across research, clinical, and operational domains.
• Prior work managing operations in missioncritical environments with strict reliability and throughput requirements.

The expected base pay range for this position as listed above is based on a 40 hour per week schedule. Broad provides pay ranges representing its reasonable and good faith estimate of what the organization reasonably expects to pay for a position at the time of posting. Actual compensation will vary based on factors including but not limited to, relevant skills, experience, education, qualifications, and other factors permissible by law.

At Broad, your base pay is just one part of a comprehensive total rewards package. From day one, this role offers a competitive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance; a 401(k) retirement plan; flexible spending and health savings accounts; at least 13 paid holidays; winter closure; paid time off; parental and family care leave; and an employee assistance program, among other Broad benefits.

The Broad Institute is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, religion, age, color, sex, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by local, state, or federal laws, rules, or regulations.

Should you need a reasonable accommodation to complete the application or interview process, please contact [e-mail] for assistance.