Director, Engineering Systems Design

Work Schedule

Environmental Conditions

Job Description

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.

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