Chief of Staff

As Chief of Staff, you serve as deputy to the Founding Director — extending his leverage across everything that moves the organization forward. You will run point on strategic partnerships with world-class institutions, own the day-to-day of licensing and contracts, coordinate grants and publication strategy, and translate high-level scientific vision into disciplined execution. The role sits on the senior leadership team and moves fluidly from the tactical (a term-sheet review, a partner meeting) to the strategic (which partnerships to prioritize, how to position the technology in a foundation grant). It is not a job with narrow lanes. If you want breadth, scientific substance, and to be trusted to run with things end-to-end, this is one of the more interesting seats in Boston-area proteomics right now.

Responsibilities

Partnerships & Institutional Relationships

• Spearhead strategic partnerships with leading academic medical centers, research institutions, and industry partners across the Greater Boston area and beyond.
• Own senior relationships with principal investigators, technology transfer offices, and program leadership — building the trust that makes ambitious collaborations possible.
• Represent the Institute in inter-institutional meetings and keep the operational rhythm of collaborations steady across partners.
  
  

Business Development, Licensing, Grants & Publications

• Advance licensing initiatives from first conversation through executed agreement; draft, review, and analyze contracts and term sheets with judgment about what actually matters.
• Coordinate grant development across NIH, DoD, and foundation opportunities — from ideation through submission.
• Support the Director's engagement with philanthropic donors — preparation, materials, and stewardship. This is a relationship role, not a professional fundraising role.
• Shape publication strategy so scientific communication aligns with partnership, IP, and BD priorities.
  
  

Deputy to the Director

• Enable delegation of high-context work by triaging, prioritizing, and executing on the Director's behalf.
• Move fluidly from tactical execution to strategic planning, depending on what the moment requires.
• Contribute to organizational direction as a member of the senior leadership team.
  
  

Scientific Communication & Institutional Storytelling

• Represent the Institute externally — communicating our mission, scientific approach, and advances in mass spectrometry to partners, prospective collaborators, philanthropic supporters, and the broader scientific community.
• Translate the technical work for the audiences that need to understand it — from a foundation program officer to a partner PI to a licensing counterparty — so the science lands with each one.
• Shape a coherent public narrative around the Institute's science and impact, and support the Director's external presence, conference engagement, and external-facing materials.
  
  

Required Skills

Background

• Technical degree in biochemistry, molecular biology, biological engineering, chemistry, or a related life science. Advanced degree preferred
• Working understanding of proteomics mass-spectrometry-based methods expected; exposure to single-cell or low-input proteomics is a strong plus.
• Prior experience in a non-profit, academic, or academic-adjacent setting (university lab, foundation, NIH-funded center, research institute, tech transfer, translational center).
• Range from tactical to strategic comfortable moving between a term sheet and an operational calendar in the same day.
• Track record of managing multi-stakeholder relationships with senior scientific and academic leaders.
  
  

You Are

• Mission-driven — genuinely energized by what proteomics is beginning to make possible.
• Highly organized and efficient able to hold multiple concurrent workstreams without losing precision.
• Optimistic and can-do comfortable in a high-agency environment where breadth is the point.
• Willing to be onsite daily in Watertown, MA, with limited hybrid flexibility.
  
  

Preferred (nice To Have)

• Prior Chief of Staff, Director of Operations, senior program manager, or senior BD / alliance manager in a scientific organization.
• Direct experience with technology licensing, tech transfer, or IP-heavy commercial partnerships in life sciences.
• Grant writing or grant management experience (NIH, DoD, foundation).
  
  

What We Offer

• Compensation & benefits: $150,000-$200,000 base commensurate with experience, plus medical, dental, and vision coverage through a PPO plan, parental leave, generous PTO and paid holidays, and a wellness allowance.
• A seat on the senior leadership team working directly with the Founding Director and the Institute's scientific and operational leadership.
• Access to state-of-the-art instrumentation — high-sensitivity, high-resolution mass spectrometry and cell-handling platforms — under one roof.
• Open-science culture where your name and work are front and center on the research you help drive, alongside a collaborative, multidisciplinary team of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.
• Proximity to the frontier of single-cell proteomics — inside a mission-driven, open-science research institute where scientific ambition and public benefit are the same thing.