Senior Director, IT

At Nautilus, we have a big and important mission: improve the health of millions by unleashing the potential of the proteome to accelerate drug development and enable a new world of precision and personalized medicine. We are developing a single-molecule protein analysis platform of unprecedented sensitivity, scale, and ease of use that we believe will democratize access to the proteome – one of the most dynamic and valuable sources of biological insight. To accomplish this, we are pursuing hard scientific problems with an entrepreneurial mindset and creating a world-class team of builders, innovators, and dreamers across a wide range of disciplines.

As the Senior Director of IT , you will drive the technological vision of our company, ensuring our systems are scalable, secure, and innovative. This role requires a forward-thinking leader who thrives in a fast-paced environment, can plan strategically, work tactically, and be hands-on in implementation.

This position will report to the Senior Director of Software Engineering and IT, and will be located in San Carlos, CA.

Responsibilities

• Develop and implement IT strategies that align with organizational goals.

• Combine strategic leadership with practical, day-to-day technical engagement to drive reliable operations across infrastructure, hardware, networking, systems management, ensuring reliability, scalability, and performance.

• Ensure data security, compliance, incidence response and disaster recovery protocols are in place.

• Oversee and own IT budgets, vendor relationships, and procurement processes to ensure cost-effective and value-driven technology investments.

• Provide regular updates to senior leadership on IT budget performance, risk posture, cybersecurity initiatives, and strategic priorities.

• Identify and implement emerging technologies to improve business processes.

• Implement AI strategy for increased organizational efficiency, decision-making, and operational outcomes.

• Collaborate with software, operations, and legal teams to define and enforce enterprise-wide data governance policies and practices.

• Partner with engineering, operations, finance, and software teams to enable technology-driven commercialization efforts

• Drive the selection, integration and management of business systems (ERP, HRIS, PLM, CRM, etc.) crucial to operations and commercialization efforts.

• Play an integral role in product definition, requirements specification and execution

• Champion DevOps practices driving infrastructure-as-code (IaC), automation, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.

• Inspire, mentor, and grow high-performing IT teams, fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, and cross-functional collaboration.

• Set and communicate clear team priorities, ensuring alignment with company strategy and responsiveness to evolving business needs.

• Build and reinforce scalable, actionable processes that empower teams to make informed decisions and deliver consistent results.

• Foster collaboration between development and operations teams to streamline deployment processes and improve system reliability.

• Navigate and lead teams through change, leveraging competitive insights and innovative thinking to adapt and thrive in dynamic environments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in information technology, information systems, computer science or a related field.

• 12+ years of IT experience, with 10+ years in a managerial role.

• Expertise in cloud computing (preferably AWS and Azure), network design and infrastructure, and enterprise software.

• Experience managing DevOps, driving IaC, automation, CI/CD pipelines, and collaboration between development and operations teams.

• Experience deploying security and SaaS tools across organizations.

• Proven experience deploying commercial products.

• Deep understanding of IT architecture and cybersecurity.

• Strong familiarity with software development practices.

• Strong leadership and project management skills.

• Experience with regulatory standards across data privacy, security, financial data management (GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, SOX, ISO27001, etc.).

• Requires bimonthly travel between office locations.

Nautilus Team Culture

• We are curious go-getters: this is a team of life-long learners who aren’t afraid to tackle the big challenges, and we embrace the journey.

• We are detail-oriented: we do great science by working smart & with diligence where we learn from our trials and mistakes.

• We are easy to work with: we want our workplace to be one where everyone can share their perspective and be treated with respect and kindness.

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