Director of Transformations

Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms. 

Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA) is a high-growth, well-capitalized public biotech company in Boston that is redesigning the living world to solve some of the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our mission to “make biology easier to engineer” is poised to disrupt multiple industries by leveraging innovative data, automation, and scale in biological engineering.

As Ginkgo enters a phase where demand for our services has never been higher, we are building a Transformation function with the mandate to identify and execute on the critical initiatives across the company that will enable us to scale and meet our Mission of Making Biology Easier to Engineer.

Reporting to the VP of Transformations, the Director of Transformations will address some of Ginkgo’s most important scaling challenges. Drawing upon their intuition, creativity, analytical skills, first principles thinking, storytelling, and experience growing operationally-complex businesses, the Director of Transformations will structure, prioritize and execute on the most critical Business Transformation initiatives for the company. The Transformation Office will consist of dedicated Transformation Office (TO) team members and leaders from across the company who are seconded to the TO for specific initiatives. 

Responsibilities

• Build the operating plan: partnering with Ginkgo’s strategic finance team, and senior leaders build the strategic plan that will set the priorities for the next 3-4 years which will be the foundation for how the company executes. Work with functions to translate those into a set of Operating Plans which consists of a set of initiatives that are required and provide governance on those initiatives. 
• Deliver on Transformation Office Initiatives: The Transformation Office will own the delivery of Transformation Office owned initiatives which are large and cross-functional. The ownership will plan problem definition, structuring, analysis, implementation and change management. 
• Partner with the business: Develop a world-class transformation office team and lead cross-functional team members to deliver on large-scale transformation initiatives.  
• Drive change, own the results: act as a financial, operational, and “change” visionary while also diving into the tactical details required to deliver on our goals. 

Desired Capabilities and Experience

• 8+ years of leading change in operationally and technically-complex organizations as a business operations, strategy, or financial professional
• Undergraduate degree in science, engineering, business, or related field
• 5+ years of experience leading teams through periods of rapid scaling in an entrepreneurial environment
• Enthusiasm about being a part of Ginkgo’s mission
• Ability to define and build new operating models from the ground up
• Comfort with leading large-scale transformations; recognizes the importance of proactive change management with a sensitivity to company culture
• Strong project management capability, including the ability to build detailed timelines and hold external teams accountable for hard deadlines
• Consistent record of successfully executing complex business and technical projects with both third parties and cross-functionally within a rapidly evolving business structure
• Ability to map team targets & execution to company strategy & vision
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, with a history of strong business judgment; reflexively reverts to first principles instead of dogma; clear thinking around which “business orthodoxy” or “best practices” should be deployed in which contexts
• Excellent verbal/written communication skills and attention to detail, with the ability to efficiently organize information, analyze large datasets, and present recommendations in a clear, impactful manner
• Exceptional relationship-building and interpersonal skills; ability to develop strong working partnerships inside and outside of Ginkgo
• Comfort working at the intersection of technical and non-technical teams 

Preferred Capabilities and Experience

• Hard tech and/or life sciences experience is a plus, but not required
• MS, MBA and/or PhD is a plus, but not required 
• Management consulting, investment banking, and/or investing experience is a plus, but not required

Total compensation for this role is market driven, with a starting salary of $175,000+, as well as company stock awards.  Base pay is ultimately determined based on a candidate's skills, expertise, and experience.  We also offer a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental & vision coverage, health spending accounts, voluntary benefits, leave of absence policies, Employee Assistance Program, 401(k) program with employer contribution, 8 paid holidays in addition to a full-week winter shutdown and unlimited Paid Time Off policy.

To learn more about Ginkgo, visit www.ginkgobioworks.com/press/ or check out some curated press below:

• What is it really like to take your company public via a SPAC? One Boston biotech shares its journey (Fortune)
• Ginkgo Bioworks resizes the definition of going big in biotech, raising $2.5B in a record SPAC deal that weighs in with a whopping $15B-plus valuation (Endpoints News)
• Ginkgo Bioworks CEO on scaling up Covid-19 testing: ‘If we try, we can win’ (CNBC)
• Ginkgo raises $70 million to ramp up COVID-19 testing for employers, universities (Boston Globe)
• Ginkgo Bioworks Redirects Its Biotech Platform to Coronavirus (Wall Street Journal)
• Ginkgo Bioworks Provides Support on Process Optimization to Moderna for COVID-19 Response (PRNewswire)
• The Life Factory: Synthetic Organisms From This $1.4 Billion Startup Will Revolutionize Manufacturing (Forbes)
• Synthetic Bio Pioneer Ginkgo Raises $290 Million in New Funding (Bloomberg)
• Ginkgo Bioworks raises $350 million fund for biotech spinouts (Reuters)
• Can This Company Convince You to Love GMOs? (The Atlantic)

We also feel that it’s important to point out the obvious here – there’s a serious lack of diversity in our industry, and that needs to change. Our goal is to help drive that change. Ginkgo is deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion and embraces how rewarding it is to work with people from all walks of life.  

We’re developing a powerful biological engineering platform, so we must remain mindful of the many ways our technology can – and will – impact people around the world. We care about how our platform is used, and having a diverse team to build it gives us the best chance that it’s something we’ll be proud of as it continues to grow. Therefore, it’s critical that we incorporate the diverse voices and visions of all those who play a role in the future of biology.

It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees, employment applicants, and EOE disability/vet.  

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