Senior Manager, Operational Excellence and Process Engineering

Location: Boulder, CO

About The Role

The Senior Manager, Laboratory Systems & Process Engineering is a people and technical leadership role responsible for managing a team of Laboratory Systems Scientists while driving the implementation, optimization, and continuous improvement of laboratory systems and operational processes supporting Foresight Diagnostics laboratory operations.

This role serves as a critical operational leader within the Operational Excellence and Process Engineering organization, bridging strategic direction from laboratory operations leadership with day-to-day execution across laboratory systems, process engineering, asset management, and technology transfer initiatives. The Senior Manager is responsible for ensuring laboratory systems and workflows are scalable, efficient, compliance, and aligned with organizational growth and business-aligned objectives.

The Senior Manager partners closely with Laboratory Operations, R&D, Bioinformatics, Software Engineering, Automation Engineering, Quality, Regulatory, and Product teams to operationalize new capabilities, improve laboratory performance, and support high-throughput and high-complexity molecular testing operations. This position requires strong leadership, operational, and process engineering capabilities, along with the ability to exercise independent judgment in managing complex cross-functional initiatives and operational challenges in a regulated clinical laboratory environment. This position reports to the Director of Laboratory Operations.

What You Will Do

• Directly manage and develop a team of Laboratory Systems Scientists responsible for laboratory systems implementation, process engineering, validation activities, and operational support.

• Provide coaching, mentorship, performance management, and career development to team members.

• Establish team priorities, allocate resources, and ensure successful execution of operational and strategic initiatives under the direction of the Director of Laboratory Operations.

• Lead implementation and optimization of laboratory systems including automation platforms, laboratory software solutions, assay chemistry changes, laboratory workflows, and operational infrastructure.

• Support operational rollout of new assays, platforms, workflows, software solutions and clinical partnerships into the clinical production environments.

• Partner cross-functionally to ensure successful technology transfer, user adoption, training, and operational readiness.

• Apply Lean principles and process engineering methodologies to improve operational efficiency, workflow reliability, throughput, and scalability.

• Identify process bottlenecks, operational risk, and system inefficiencies through analysis of operational and analytical performance data.

• Lead structured problem-solving and root cause investigations to resolve complex operational issues and implement sustainable corrective actions.

• Oversee execution of validation, verification, and performance qualification activities for laboratory systems, automation platforms, instrumentation/equipment, and operational workflows as assigned.

• Ensure laboratory systems and operational processes align with CAP, CLIA, NYSDOH, GxP and applicable regulatory requirements.

• Collaborate with cross functional stakeholders to define system requirements and operational priorities translating operational needs into functional requirements and scalable process solutions.

• Support development and monitoring of KPIs, dashboards, and operational metrics related to laboratory systems, workflow performance, quality, and throughput as assigned utilizing operational data to identify trends, evaluate system effectiveness, and drive >www.natera.com.

  Natera is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace environment, and welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives. Inclusive collaboration benefits our employees, our community and our patients, and is critical to our mission of changing the management of disease worldwide.

  All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply, and will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with applicable laws.

  If you are based in California, we encourage you to read this important information for California residents.

  Link: natera.com email domain ONLY. Email communications from all other domain names are not from Natera or its employees and are fraudulent. Natera does not request interviews via text messages and does not ask for personal information until a candidate has engaged with the company and has spoken to a recruiter and the hiring team. Natera takes cyber crimes seriously, and will collaborate with law enforcement authorities to prosecute any related cyber crimes.

  For more information:
  - BBB announcement on job scams
  - FBI Cyber Crime resource page