Senior Manager, Laboratory Design & Space Planning

ROLE SUMMARY

The Laboratory Designer & Space Planner serves as Pfizer’s global scientific-workplace authority, accountable for setting laboratory planning strategy, governance, and design standards and for translating evolving research and development (R&D) priorities into portfolio-level laboratory, support, and associated office-space solutions across Pfizer’s global research portfolio.

Operating at the intersection of scientific fluency, design excellence, data-driven space planning, and stakeholder engagement, the role partners with R&D leaders and scientists to program, plan, and continuously optimize laboratory environments that are safe, flexible, efficient, and purpose-built for the science they support. It owns and governs Pfizer’s global laboratory planning and design standards and drives their evolution as scientific priorities, technologies, sustainability expectations, and ways of working change, and it delivers programming and technical planning inputs — feasibility, scope, assumptions, and risks — that inform integrated workplace strategies, capital planning, and investment recommendations.

Reporting to the Director, R&D Workplace Strategy Lead, the role also serves as the team's senior laboratory space specialist and liaison to Global Workplace Design & Change Management (DCM) and to the Sustainability & Hospitality Center of Excellence (COE), upholding their standards across laboratory projects and feeding laboratory insights back into Pfizer's global design standards.

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES

• Scientific requirements translation & lab space programming — Lead Execute engagement with R&D leaders and scientists to understand current and future portfolio-wide scientific requirements and translate them into practical laboratory, support, and associated office-space solutions. Facilitate programming with scientists, laboratory operations, Engineering, Environmental Health & Safety (EHS), and Digital to capture workflows, equipment, headcount, capacity, adjacencies, and personnel/material flows, and produce space programs, blocking-and-stacking concepts, and phase-appropriate planning narratives, also assessing how automation and emerging technologies affect laboratory requirements.
• Ownership & evolution of global laboratory design standards — Own and govern maintain Pfizer's laboratory planning and design standards — across laboratories, hybrid workspaces, and shared support functions — driving their evolution and keeping them current and shared with the COE. Maintain a high global design bar by integrating evidence-based insights, inclusive design, sustainability, well-being, safety, and operational feedback into standards. Also help establish practical, safety-driven lab standards.
• Flexible, adaptable & colleague-centered design — Identify opportunities for flexible, adaptable laboratory design as science priorities evolve, applying metrics and standards while customizing for colleague needs and intended use. Balance generational, accessibility (ADA), and neurodivergent-design considerations with functionality, and balance technology and operational efficiency against cost to ensure efficient use of financial resources.
• Master planning, demand forecasting & utilization analytics — Support site, campus, and network master planning and strategic portfolio planning — forecasting laboratory and workplace demand; providing capacity, utilization, and feasibility analysis; and evaluating renovation, consolidation, expansion, and new-build options and their tradeoffs. Maintain accurate space records in the CAFM / IWMS environment (e.g., TRIRIGA) and use that data, with approved analytics and AI-enabled tools, to produce scenario-planning insights that inform capital investment and occupancy decisions.
• Cross-functional stakeholder liaison — Serve as the primary liaison among scientists, project teams, architects, engineers, and planners for lab space design and planning initiatives, and as the team's liaison to DCM and the Sustainability & Hospitality COE. Build relationships across GWE operations, laboratory operations, Engineering, Digital, Real Estate, capital planning, and project delivery teams (and external consultants), and partner with each site's EHS and Laboratory Instrument Services (LIS) teams to confirm safety requirements and the services needed when moving or populating labs.

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