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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