Director of Research Informatics & AI Platforms

Denali Therapeutics Inc; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 204,000 - 265,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401k

Healthcare coverage

ESPP

Job summary

Denali Therapeutics is seeking a Director of Research Informatics to lead our scientific data platforms, including Benchling and Dotmatics, and to guide AI tool integrations across Discovery and IT. This hands‑on leadership role demands defining the informatics roadmap, building a high‑caliber engineering team, and partnering with stakeholders to ensure scalable, compliant data solutions.

You will own platform strategy, oversee platform migrations, and articulate risks to senior leadership while

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a technical field; advanced degree preferred.
• 10+ years building and delivering software solutions; 7+ years in pharma/biotech/life sciences.
• 8+ years of people management experience; building engineering teams.
• Hands-on with scientific data platforms (Benchling, Dotmatics) and ELN migrations.
• Experience partnering with enterprise IT on security, licensing, and infra; AI/ML workflows familiarity.

Responsibilities

• Owns strategy, roadmap, and delivery of Research Informatics platforms.
• Leads and grows a team responsible for platform support and improvements.
• Partners with scientists to translate requirements into scalable platform solutions.
• Subject matter expert on ELN capabilities and data workflows.
• Communicates platform strategy and risk to senior stakeholders.
• Hones hands-on platform build work alongside strategic oversight.
• Manages vendor relationships, migrations, and contract performance.
• Explores AI-driven experiment capture concepts while preserving compliant records.
• Prioritizes backlog balancing input from science, engineering, IT.
• Leads annual goal setting, growth planning, and training compliance.

Skills

Leadership

Strategy development

Stakeholder communication

Team management

Education

Bachelor's degree in technical field

Advanced degree preferred

Tools

Benchling

Dotmatics

ELN

Job description

Denali Therapeutics is seeking a Director of Research Informatics to lead our scientific data platforms, including Benchling and Dotmatics, and to guide AI tool integrations across Discovery and IT. This hands‑on leadership role demands defining the informatics roadmap, building a high‑caliber engineering team, and partnering with stakeholders to ensure scalable, compliant data solutions.

You will own platform strategy, oversee platform migrations, and articulate risks to senior leadership while