Senior Manager, Laboratory Design & Space Planning

Pfizer; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Pfizer seeks a Senior Manager, Laboratory Design & Space Planning to serve as the global scientific-workplace authority, setting standards and translating evolving R&D priorities into portfolio-level laboratory, support, and office-space solutions across Pfizer’s global research portfolio.

Operating at the intersection of scientific fluency, design excellence, data-driven space planning, and stakeholder engagement, the role partners with R&D leaders to program, plan, and optimize laboratory

Responsibilities

• Scientific requirements translation & lab space programming — Engage with R&D leaders and scientists to translate scientific needs into practical lab and office-space solutions, capturing workflows, equipment, headcount, capacity, adjacencies, and flows.
• Ownership & evolution of global laboratory design standards — Maintain Pfizer's laboratory planning and design standards across laboratories, hybrid spaces, and shared functions, driving evolution aligned with changing priorities and technologies.

Job description

Role Summary

The Senior Manager, Laboratory Design & Space Planning serves as Pfizer’s global scientific-workplace authority, accountable for setting laboratory planning and design standards and for translating evolving research and development (R&D) priorities into portfolio-level laboratory, support, and associated office-space solutions across Pfizer’s global research portfolio.

Role Summary

The Senior Manager, Laboratory Design & Space Planning serves as Pfizer’s global scientific-workplace authority, accountable for setting laboratory planning and design standards and for translating evolving research and development (R&D) priorities into portfolio-level laboratory, support, and associated office-space solutions across Pfizer’s global research portfolio.

Operating at the intersection of scientific fluency, design excellence, data-driven space planning, and stakeholder engagement, the role partners with R&D leaders and scientists to program, plan, and continuously optimize laboratory environments that are safe, flexible, efficient, and purpose-built for the science they support.

It owns Pfizer’s global laboratory planning and design standards and drives their evolution as scientific priorities, technologies, sustainability expectations, and ways of working change, and it delivers programming and technical planning inputs — feasibility, scope, assumptions, and risks — that inform integrated workplace strategies, capital planning, and investment recommendations.

Reporting to the Director, R&D Workplace Strategy Lead, the role also serves as the team's senior laboratory space specialist and liaison to Global Workplace Design & Change Management (DCM) and to the Sustainability & Hospitality Center of Excellence (COE), upholding their standards across laboratory projects and feeding laboratory insights back into Pfizer's global design standards.

Role Responsibilities

• Scientific requirements translation & lab space programming — Execute engagement with R&D leaders and scientists to understand current and future portfolio-wide scientific requirements and translate them into practical laboratory, support, and associated office-space solutions. Facilitate programming with scientists, laboratory operations, Engineering, Environmental Health & Safety (EHS), and Digital to capture workflows, equipment, headcount, capacity, adjacencies, and personnel/material flows, and produce space programs, blocking-and-stacking concepts, and phase-appropriate planning narratives, also assessing how automation and emerging technologies affect laboratory requirements.
• Ownership & evolution of global laboratory design standards — Own and maintain Pfizer's laboratory planning and design standards — across laboratories, hybrid workspaces, and shared support functions — driving their evolution and keeping them current and shared with the