Senior Director of Autoimmune Translational Medicine

Initial Therapeutics, Inc.; Cambridge (MA); On-site; USD 197,000 - 353,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive healthcare

Well-being resources

Generous paid time off

Job summary

Moderna seeks a Senior Director, Translational Medicine Lead – Autoimmune to shape translational strategy across high-priority autoimmune programs. The role couples deep human immunology expertise with biomarker-driven development to inform dose, patient population, and lifecycle decisions.

You will guide PK/PD integration, safety frameworks, and external scientific engagement, mentoring leaders and driving cross-asset translational capabilities in a fast-growing immune therapeutics portfolio.

Qualifications

• PhD, MD, MD/PhD, PharmD, or equivalent advanced degree in immunology, autoimmune disease, translational medicine, or a related discipline.
• Typically 10+ years of relevant scientific and drug-development experience following advanced training, with substantial biotechnology/pharmaceutical and/or human translational medicine experience.
• Demonstrated track record leading translational strategy for multiple clinical-stage immune-mediated or autoimmune programs.
• Broad and deep expertise in human immunology and autoimmune disease mechanisms, including strong command of adaptive and innate immunology, T-cell regulation, B-cell and autoantibody biology, antigen presentation, and inflammatory signaling.
• Extensive experience with clinical biomarker strategy and biomarker-rich clinical trials, with demonstrated ability to translate complex immune mechanisms and clinical and translational datasets into dose, patient population, proof-of-concept, lifecycle, and other development decisions.
• Strong understanding of the end-to-end drug-development process and how translational evidence influences clinical, regulatory, and portfolio strategy.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and influence senior stakeholders in complex matrix environments, mentor scientific talent, and communicate effectively at executive level.

Responsibilities

• Lead clinical-facing translational strategy for multiple programs and/or the most scientifically complex and business-critical autoimmune assets, integrating disease biology, therapeutic mechanism, patient heterogeneity, pharmacology, biomarker evidence, safety, and clinical outcomes into coherent development strategies.
• Define the evidence required to establish confidence in mechanism, biological activity, therapeutic window, differentiation, and probability of technical success; anticipate major translational uncertainties and establish focused evidence-generation strategies to resolve them.
• Shape autoimmune portfolio and modality strategy by establishing common scientific frameworks for immune tolerance, immune reset, durability, relapse, and non-response, and by informing prioritization of programs and indications based on human biology, translatability, biomarker feasibility, and competitive differentiation.
• Provide senior leadership in human translational immunology, establishing state-of-the-art approaches to evaluate pathogenic and regulatory T-cell biology, B-cell states, autoantibodies, innate immunity, antigen-specific responses, and immune networks in patients.
• Advance cross-program biomarker and translational technology strategy, including standards for clinical immune monitoring and fit-for-purpose use of high-dimensional flow cytometry, antigen-specific functional assays, immune repertoire analysis, transcriptomics, proteomics, serology, HLA/genetic analysis, and tissue-based approaches.
• Partner with Clinical and Quantitative Pharmacology to establish integrated PK/PD and exposure-response frameworks connecting dose to target engagement, immune-cell effects, disease biology, safety, and clinical outcomes, including induction, maintenance, retreatment, or boosting strategies where relevant.
• Shape translational safety strategy by anticipating risks from novel immune biology and integrating mechanistic monitoring into development plans; provide senior scientific leadership in interpreting relationships between efficacy-driving pharmacology and safety.
• Serve as a senior translational voice in program and portfolio governance, presenting and defending recommendations concerning mechanism, patient population, dose, proof-of-concept, indication expansion, Go/No-Go criteria, and translational probability of success.
• Lead cross-program reverse translation by identifying patterns across clinical programs, building feedback loops between human data and Research, and ensuring clinical observations influence target selection, modality design, next-generation programs, and portfolio-level understanding of mRNA/LNP behavior in autoimmune applications.
• Build scientific capability and talent by mentoring Directors, Associate Directors, and scientists; establishing best practices; identifying capability gaps; and leading selected cross-functional initiatives that improve scientific quality, consistency, and speed across Translational Medicine.
• Lead external scientific engagement with investigators and experts in autoimmune disease, immunology, and translational medicine; represent Moderna in scientific collaborations and appropriate external forums; drive high-impact publication strategies; and support evaluation of external technologies, partnerships, and innovation.
• Additional duties as may be assigned from time to time.

Skills

Immunology leadership

Translational medicine

Biomarker strategy

Clinical development

Strategic leadership

Education

PhD/MD/MD-PhD/PharmD or equivalent

Job description

Moderna seeks a Senior Director, Translational Medicine Lead – Autoimmune to shape translational strategy across high-priority autoimmune programs. The role couples deep human immunology expertise with biomarker-driven development to inform dose, patient population, and lifecycle decisions.

You will guide PK/PD integration, safety frameworks, and external scientific engagement, mentoring leaders and driving cross-asset translational capabilities in a fast-growing immune therapeutics portfolio.