Director, Field Translational Science - Oncology

Director, Field Translational Science — Oncology 

Position Summary

Natera is shifting disease management worldwide through unprecedented molecular innovation. As the Director of Field Translational Science, you will build, scale, and lead a specialized team of field-facing translational scientists within our Oncology Business Unit. This high-autonomy leadership role is designed for a strategic builder who can run a sophisticated regional team while serving as the executive authority for advanced Natera tests - including, but not limited to, cell-free DNA (cfDNA) and minimal residual disease (MRD) assays - and their associated data analysis frameworks across elite academic medical centers.

This position requires up to 50-70% regional travel to engage with institutional leadership and audit high-priority research partnerships. You will eliminate the standard boundaries between field data generation and internal pipeline design. Distinct from traditional, education-focused Medical Affairs teams (MSLs), your organization owns the structural integrity, statistical validation, and scientific output of investigator-led data collaborations.

Primary Responsibilities

• Team Leadership & Scale: Hire, develop, and manage a premier field organization of translational scientists, establishing clear performance metrics tied to regional data velocity, scientific rigor, and publication quality.
• Strategic Data Architecture: Author and execute the regional data engagement strategy, guiding how field scientists partner with oncologists, pathologists, and biometricians to unlock complex ctDNA and real-world datasets; holds the institutional/enterprise escalation line for the direct day-to-day communication line with the clinicians.
• Regional Operations & Systems Governance: Oversee the secure regional tracking architecture and data ingestion pipelines that individual Field Translational Scientists operate within; ensure absolute data compliance, system integrity, and streamlined data flow from investigator sites into internal analysis platforms. 
• Cross-Functional Governance: Command the interface between field operations and internal Oncology Translational Medicine & Scientific Communications, Medical Affairs, Life Cycle,  R&D and Product Development leadership, translating field-derived real-world evidence into high-impact pipeline recommendations.
• Investigator-Led Portfolio Management: In partnership with MSLs, oversee the lifecycle of all regional investigator-initiated trials (IITs) and institutional registries, ensuring team members enable investigators to maximize the utility of Natera’s proprietary analytical tools and data visualization platforms to achieve statistical robustness and prompt manuscript generation.
• Institutional Network Expansion: Secure, scale, and manage institutional data-sharing models, biobanking governance, and EMR data-integration initiatives with core comprehensive cancer networks.
• Scientific Advocacy & Compliance: Represent Natera as a senior scientific authority at major oncology congresses, ensuring all field data-handling methods maintain absolute alignment with HIPAA, CAP/CLIA, PHI data protocols, FDA regulations, and PhRMA codes of interaction.

Qualifications

• Required Education: PhD or MD in Cancer Biology, Genomics, Bioinformatics, or a related complex molecular science discipline.
• Required Experience: 6+ years of total experience within basic or translational oncology research, including a minimum of 2+ years of explicit people management experience leading high-performing scientific or clinical teams within the diagnostics,  biotechnology or pharmaceutical sectors.
• Domain Mastery: Exceptional command of cancer biology and genetics, liquid biopsy modalities and clinical utilities, next-generation sequencing (NGS) and ctDNA workflows and data interpretation, and statistical methods.
• Data-Centric Track Record: Documented success managing complex genomic datasets, institutional electronic medical record (EMR) integrations, or complex clinical data registries.
• Leadership Style: Proven ability to manage teams through high ambiguity, prioritizing structured logic and rapid, high-judgment decision-making over consensus-driven delays.
• Operational Mobility: Ability and willingness to travel domestically up to 50-70% to support team execution, site audits, and principal investigator collaborations.