LOCATION: This individual must be within driving distance to San Carlos, CA OR Austin, TX - And can come for onsite meetings periodically. 

POSITION SUMMARY: We have an exciting opportunity for a Senior Program Manager of Research to join the Program Management team. This position provides cross-functional program leadership to advance Natera’s research initiatives, improve current products, and launch new products. The successful candidate will utilize project management tools to drive high level collaboration and coordination with various business functions, track progress, and provide detailed status reports to management. The Senior Program Manager is essential to ensuring teams define and achieve the objectives and goals required to complete projects on time and budget.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES: 

• Provide cross-functional program leadership to launch, support, and deliver on-time for research initiatives.
• Drive high level collaboration and coordination with various business functions to facilitate the planning process, setting goals & milestones, and creation of comprehensive timelines taking into account available resources, dependencies, budget, priorities and other constraints.
• Take ownership of tracking overall team progress and provide detailed management status reports, including KPIs.
• Oversight of all phases of the research and product development life-cycle process from Pre-Concept to Commercialization, understand Design Control principles, manage gate-keeping, design freezes, design reviews, change control, sign-offs, etc.
• Lead regular team meetings to monitor progress, track and mitigate risks, resolve/escalate issues, and review action items.
• Create project plans to deliver products on tight timelines in coordination with cross-functional teams. 
• Provide clear and concise status updates on projects to the executive leadership team
• Interface with external partners and facilitate joint R&D efforts.
• Performs other duties as assigned. 

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in Biology or equivalent. MS or PhD in molecular biology, genetics, biochemistry, or related technical field preferred.
• Minimum of 5-8 years of program management or related, relevant experience.
• Certification or formal training in Program or Project Management and experience using resource management tools a plus.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES:

• Experience leading and collaborating to execute successfully on program directives independently and without direct authority.
• Experience compiling GANTT charts and project plans.
• Experience with project management tools (Google, Smartsheet, MS Project, Kira, Confluence)
• Excellent interpersonal skills in addition to having the ability to effectively communicate within the project teams as well as to top level management.
• Excellent organization and time management/multi-tasking skills. Comfortable in an ambiguous and fast-paced environment, operating at both strategic and tactical levels with ease.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams to bring complex initiatives from pre-concept through execution.
• Experience facilitating design control, risk assessment, and related activities.
• Advanced genetic diagnostics/molecular biology subject matter expertise.
• Experience facilitating product and project definition.
• Experience facilitating risk mitigation, decision making, and issue resolution.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.