Senior Director, Scientific Project Lead (Oncology)

Generate:Biomedicines; Somerville (MA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Generate:Biomedicines seeks a Senior Director, Scientific Project Lead, Oncology to steer complex programs from concept through preclinical development, shaping translational strategy and guiding portfolio decisions.

The role combines people management with broad leadership across research, translational, and development functions, partnering with executives to align teams, mitigate risks, and drive high-quality data-driven decisions.

Qualifications

• PhD, MD, or MD/PhD in cancer biology, immuno-oncology, or related field.
• 12+ years of relevant experience in biotech, pharma, academia, or related scientific environment.
• Experience identifying, evaluating, or advancing therapeutic targets and preclinical programs in oncology.
• Experience designing or interpreting preclinical oncology studies and translating findings into hypotheses.
• Experience managing scientists and leading multidisciplinary teams through influence.
• Ability to synthesize complex scientific issues into sound decisions and governance recommendations.

Responsibilities

• Lead cross-functional scientific programs from concept through preclinical development with accountability for strategy, execution, and governance.
• Develop integrated program strategies aligning objectives, timelines, dependencies, and resourcing.
• Set program direction, advance opportunities, and integrate biology, platform capabilities, and evidence for decision-making.
• Facilitate discussions, resolve diverse viewpoints, and drive clear recommendations and go/no-go decisions.
• Drive execution across wet lab, computational, translational, and preclinical workstreams with high-quality data packages.
• Build resource plans and budget assumptions, anticipate inflection points, and resolve risks and dependencies.
• Establish operating mechanisms for governance, risk tracking, and cross-functional accountability.
• Manage, coach, and develop direct reports and mentor team members in partnership with managers.
• Foster a high-performing culture rooted in rigor, accountability, collaboration, and urgency.

Skills

Scientific leadership

Program management

Cross-functional collaboration

People management

Strategic decision making

Budget & resourcing

Education

PhD/MD/MD-PhD in cancer biology/immuno-oncology

Job description

Generate is seeking a Senior Director, Scientific Project Lead, Oncology to lead complex, cross-functional scientific programs from concept and early discovery through preclinical development, contribute to translational and early development strategy, and manage and develop scientific talent.

This role combines formal people management with broad cross-functional leadership across research, platform, translational, preclinical, development, and portfolio functions. Working closely with functional, business and technical leaders, project managers, and senior and executive stakeholders, the Scientific Project Lead will bring deep scientific judgment in therapeutic discovery, strategic program leadership, and operational rigor to align multidisciplinary teams, guide key decisions, represent programs in governance forums, and contribute to portfolio prioritization.

Here’s how you will contribute:

• Lead complex, cross-functional programs from concept and early discovery through preclinical development, with accountability for scientific strategy, execution quality, team effectiveness, risk management, and stage-gate readiness.
• Develop andmaintainintegrated program strategies and plans that align scientific objectives, timelines, dependencies, critical path activities, and resourcing.
• Setscientificprogram direction and identify and advance therapeutic opportunities and target proposals by integrating disease biology, Generate’s differentiated platform capabilities, internal and external evidence, translational and clinical rationale, and competitive intelligence.
• Facilitatecross-functional discussions, resolve divergent perspectives, make clear recommendations, own key scientific decisions within the project team structure, and drive timely go/no-go recommendations.
• Drive execution across wet lab, computational, platform, translational, and preclinical workstreams, ensuring scientific rigor, reproducibility, strong documentation, and high-quality data packages.
• Develop resource plans and budget assumptions,anticipatestrategic inflection points, and proactively resolve risks, gaps, and cross-functional dependencies.
• Build effective operating mechanisms for program planning, governance preparation, risk tracking, decision-making, and cross-functional accountability.
• Manage, coach, and develop direct reports through clearobjectives, regular feedback, performance management, compensation recommendations, and career development; mentor cross-functional team members in partnership with their functional managers.
• Set clear expectations and foster a high-performing team culture grounded in scientific rigor, accountability, transparency, urgency, collaboration, and constructive challenge.

The Ideal Candidate will have:

• PhD, MD, or MD/PhD in cancer biology,immuno-oncology, or another discipline relevant to therapeutic discovery and development.
• 12+ years of relevantexperience in biotech, pharma, academia, or a related scientific environment.
• Experienceidentifying, evaluating, or advancing therapeutic targets and preclinical programs in oncology.
• Experience designing or interpreting preclinical oncology studies, including in vitro functional assays, in vivo efficacy models, and pharmacodynamic or mechanistic studies that connectmechanismto clinically meaningful hypotheses.
• Experience managing and developing scientists or other technical professionals, combined with a strong record of leading multidisciplinary teams through influence.
• Experience shaping program strategy, influencing senior stakeholders, and synthesizing complex scientific issues into sound decisions and clear governance recommendations, sometimes with incomplete information, while navigating scientific and resource tradeoffs in a matrixed environment.
• Strong operational leadership, learning agility, intellectual curiosity, and comfortoperatingin ambiguous and evolving environments, with a practical approach to solving problems and unblocking teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with protein therapeutics and related modalities, includingmultispecificantibodies, immune engagers, antibody-drug conjugates, peptides, or other conjugate-based approaches.
• Familiarity with computational protein design, machine learning-enabled discovery, or platform-scale biological systems.
• Familiarity with IND-enabling studies and early clinical development for oncology therapeutics.
• Experience working effectively with consultants, CROs, and other external partners.
• Comfort using LLM-enabled tools and emerging agentic workflows to support scientific planning, analysis, and execution.

Who Will Love This Job:

• A biomedical scientist who enjoysidentifyingnovel oncology targets and turning early ideas into well-defined therapeutic opportunities.
• A scientifically grounded leader energized by complex programs, consequential decisions, incomplete information, and the opportunity to adapt quickly as new dataemerge.
• An entrepreneurial, hands-on problem solver with an agile mindset who thrives at the interface of cancer biology, platform technologies, translational science, and portfolio strategy.
• A matrix leader who enjoys working and learning across domains, builds trust, sets a high bar, and aligns strong cross-functional partners through influence.
• A people leader who enjoys developing talent while building resilient, collaborative, and high-performing teams.

About Generate:Biomedicines

We are a clinical-stage generative biology company pioneering the AI revolution in drug design and development. We are advancing a new approach to drug creation—one grounded in the ability to design proteins with defined biological intent. By integrating machine learning with large-scale experimentation, this approach aims to reduce the uncertainty, time, and cost associated with developing protein-based medicines.

Founded in 2018, we are advancing a growing pipeline of clinical and preclinical programs across multiple disease areas and protein modalities. By unifying computational design and clinical development within a single operating model, we translate this approach into clinical-stage programs and are leading a shift from traditional drug discovery toward systematic drug generation.

At Generate:Biomedicines, we collaborate across disciplines in new ways to invent and innovate. We bring diverse perspectives to a shared goal of delivering better medicines to patients in need, faster, guided by our values and leadership behaviors.

Generate:Biomedicines is committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies

Generate:Biomedicines does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Generate:Biomedicines or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by the Company’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Generate:Biomedicines and the Company will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.

Compensation:

The base salary range provided reflects our current estimate of what we anticipate paying for this position. Your actual base salary will be based on several factors, including job-related skills, experience, internal equity, relevant education or training, and market dynamics. In addition, you will be eligible for an annual bonus, equity compensation, and a competitive benefits package.