Director, Engineering Systems Design

Location: Pleasanton, California, USA

Work Schedule

Environmental Conditions

As part of the Thermo Fisher Scientific team, you’ll discover meaningful work that makes a positive impact on a global scale. Join our colleagues in bringing our Mission to life every single day to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. We provide our global teams with the resources needed to achieve individual career goals while helping to take science a step beyond by developing solutions for some of the world’s toughest challenges, like protecting the environment, making sure our food is safe or helping find cures for cancer.

Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Genetic Sciences Division develops integrated life-science platforms combining instruments, consumables, assays, firmware, software and data.

We are seeking a Director of Core Engineering & Systems Design to lead systems engineering, integration and hardware engineering across electrical, mechanical and optical disciplines. This leader will be accountable for engineering capability, technical excellence and execution across a division-wide portfolio of product-development and lifecycle programs.

The Director will operate through managers and senior technical leaders who lead individual projects. This role will establish priorities, deploy capability, develop leaders and maintain visibility of technical health and risk across the portfolio.

The successful candidate will bring extensive experience building and commercializing life-science instrumentation, consumables and scientific workflows, together with the organizational judgment to align R&D, Product Management, Operations, Quality and global engineering teams.

What will you do

Lead Core Engineering

• Lead systems engineering, integration and hardware engineering across electrical, mechanical and optical disciplines.
• Establish functional strategies, technical standards, development methods and capability roadmaps.
• Build strong managers and technical leaders who guide individual product programs.
• Ensure programs have the leadership, expertise and capacity required for successful execution.
• Develop depth in critical disciplines and reduce dependency on individual experts.
• Balance resources across new products, platform investments, sustaining engineering and lifecycle priorities.
• Govern the Engineering Portfolio
• Maintain a division-wide view of engineering priorities, capacity, technical maturity and risk.
• Partner with R&D, business and Product Management leaders to align engineering resources with portfolio strategy.
• Establish portfolio-level indicators for technical health, integration readiness, quality and delivery risk.
• Review program health through engineering leaders and address cross-program dependencies or capability gaps.
• Resolve resource and priority conflicts that cannot be addressed within individual programs.
• Intervene directly when risks are systemic, cross-platform or business-critical.
• Provide senior leadership with clear recommendations on investment, sequencing and technical risk.

Drive Engineering Excellence

• Establish practical standards for requirements, design, analysis, integration, verification and technical reviews.
• Strengthen model-based engineering, simulation, interface management and evidence-based decision-making.
• Ensure appropriate engineering rigor based on product complexity, intended use and risk.
• Identify recurring issues across the portfolio and address their systemic causes.
• Promote reuse of proven designs, models, methods and test assets.
• Apply processes based on intent and risk so they improve decisions without unnecessarily slowing teams.

Ensure Integrated Product Development

• Ensure programs develop instruments, consumables, assays, firmware, software and data as integrated systems.
• Establish strong partnership between Product Management and engineering during product definition and concept selection.
• Ensure customer and scientific workflows translate into clear product and system requirements.
• Review critical trade-offs involving scientific performance, customer experience, cost, schedule and risk.
• Ensure technical leaders maintain product coherence from feasibility through commercialization and lifecycle support.
• Use learning from development, manufacturing and field performance to improve future products.
• Build Global Capability and Leadership Depth
• Establish common engineering practices across the Bay Area, Singapore and India.
• Distribute meaningful technical ownership while maintaining clear standards and accountability.
• Partner with site leaders to develop local capability and align resources with portfolio needs.
• Build succession depth for management and critical technical roles.
• Identify future capability gaps and develop plans to build, hire or partner for them.
• Create a culture that is agile, hungry, curious and grounded in customer value.
• Advance AI-Enabled Engineering and Products
• Define how AI, modeling, simulation and automation will improve engineering effectiveness across the portfolio.
• Promote AI-assisted requirements analysis, concept evaluation, design optimization and risk identification.
• Advance digital twins, predictive models and data-driven approaches that reduce development cycles and physical iteration.
• Ensure hardware, sensing, compute and data capabilities support intelligent instruments and connected workflows.
• Partner with Architecture, Software and Data Science leaders to align AI-enabled product development.
• Establish appropriate validation, traceability, governance and human accountability for AI-assisted engineering.
• Measure the impact of AI adoption rather than treating it as isolated experimentation.
• Lead Across the Enterprise
• Build strong partnerships with Product Management, science, software, Quality, Regulatory, Operations, Service and Commercial leadership.
• Translate engineering portfolio decisions into customer, business, investment and lifecycle implications.
• Align senior stakeholders through resource, priority and technical trade-offs.
• Represent Core Engineering in product, portfolio and divisional governance.
• Engage customers, suppliers and technology partners to strengthen engineering direction and external awareness.

How will you get here

Education

Advanced degree in systems, electrical, mechanical, optical, biomedical or computer engineering, applied physics or a related discipline.

Experience

• Extensive experience developing and commercializing integrated life-science instrumentation, consumables and customer workflows.
• Demonstrated success leading a portfolio of complex product-development and lifecycle programs through engineering leaders.
• Significant organizational leadership across systems engineering, integration or hardware engineering.
• Experience building managers, senior technical leaders and multidisciplinary engineering teams.
• Experience allocating resources and resolving priorities across multiple programs and platforms.
• Experience in regulated or highly quality-controlled product-development environments.
• Proven success leading across functions, global sites and matrixed organizations.
• Technical and Strategic Depth
• Broad knowledge across systems, electrical, mechanical and optical engineering, with deep expertise in at least one discipline.
• Strong understanding of molecular biology workflows and how scientific, consumable and instrument performance interact.
• Experience with products integrating instruments, consumables, assays, firmware, software and data.
• Strong knowledge of system integration, requirements, technical risk management and verification.
• Ability to identify portfolio-level technical risks, capability gaps and investment needs.
• Experience with model-based engineering, simulation and modern engineering tools.
• Understanding of reliability, manufacturability, serviceability, cybersecurity and lifecycle management.
• Practical knowledge of AI/ML applications in engineering and intelligent products.
• Leadership and Behaviors
• Operates effectively through leaders rather than becoming the project lead.
• Builds strong organizations, technical leadership and succession depth.
• Combines technical credibility with scientific, customer and business judgment.
• Maintains a portfolio perspective and makes disciplined priority decisions.
• Surfaces systemic risks early and intervenes at the appropriate level.
• Aligns functions, global sites and senior stakeholders around enterprise outcomes.
• Balances near-term delivery with long-term capability and customer trust.

Why This Role Matters

GSD’s portfolio requires consistent engineering excellence across multiple platforms and global teams. This role will build the leaders, capabilities and operating mechanisms needed to develop instrumentation, consumables and scientific workflows as integrated systems while maintaining technical visibility and accountability across the division.

Compensation and Benefits

The salary range estimated for this position based in California is $198,900.00–$298,350.00.

This position may also be eligible to receive a variable annual bonus based on company, team, and/or individual performance results in accordance with company policy. We offer a comprehensive Total Rewards package that our U.S. colleagues and their families can count on, which includes:

A choice of national medical and dental plans, and a national vision plan, including health incentive programs

Employee assistance and family support programs, including commuter benefits and tuition reimbursement

At least 120 hours paid time off (PTO), 10 paid holidays annually, paid parental leave (3 weeks for bonding and 8 weeks for caregiver leave), accident and life insurance, and short- and long-term disability in accordance with company policy

Retirement and savings programs, such as our competitive 401(k) U.S. retirement savings plan

Employees’ Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) offers eligible colleagues the opportunity to purchase company stock at a discount

For more information on our benefits, please visit: https://jobs.thermofisher.com/global/en/total-rewards