Associate Director / Director, Program Management

Associate Director / Director, Program Management

Level: Associate Director / Director

Location: Seattle, WA (Onsite) / Remote Options Considered

Company: Stealth Biotech

About the Company

We’re an early-stage, venture-backed biotech operating in stealth mode, advancing a novel biologic therapeutic targeting a significant unmet need in infectious disease. We’re building a lean, high-conviction team that moves fast, holds itself to rigorous scientific and operational standards, and is deeply motivated by the possibility of getting an important medicine to patients. If building something from the ground up energizes you, we’d love to talk.

The Role

The Associate Director / Director, Program Management will be the operational and strategic backbone of our lead program. This is our first dedicated program management hire — you will build the infrastructure, own the integrated plan, and serve as the connective tissue across clinical, CMC, nonclinical, regulatory, and finance. You will work in close partnership with the Program Team Lead, together driving the decisions and actions that keep the program moving. You will provide the operational rigor, synthesis, and structure that translates company strategy into an executable plan.

A defining strength of this role is the ability to quickly distill complex, multi-workstream problems into clear, crisp summaries that enable fast, confident decision-making by leadership — and then see those decisions through to efficient and successful execution. You bring both the strategic perspective to frame the right questions, the relationships to influence across the organization, and the hands-on instincts to drive them to resolution. You will report directly to senior leadership and have real influence on how this company operates.

Key Responsibilities

Program Strategy & Planning

• Own the integrated development plan for our lead program, spanning clinical, CMC, nonclinical, regulatory, and early commercial readiness — from current stage through FIH, into Phase 2, and beyond. Translate company strategy into a plan the whole organization can execute against.
• Build and maintain the master program timeline, including critical path analysis, risk identification, and scenario plans — ensuring leadership always has a clear, current picture of where the program stands and what decisions lie ahead.
• Partner with the Program Team Lead and senior leadership to maintain the Target Product Profile, key program assumptions, and go/no-go decision frameworks as the science evolves.
• Develop and manage program budgets, supporting financial forecasting and investor milestone reporting.

Decision Enablement & Leadership Communication

• Serve as the primary translator between program complexity and leadership clarity — synthesizing inputs from across functions into concise, decision-ready framing for the senior leadership, and the board.
• Anticipate where decisions are needed, define the question clearly, assemble the relevant facts and options, and drive the team to resolution — before gaps become delays. Own the follow-through that turns decisions into action.
• Partner with the Program Team Lead to prepare for governance interactions, ensuring leadership always has the context, framing, and options they need to decide with confidence.
• Author clear, compelling program updates, risk summaries, and milestone narratives for investor- and board-facing materials — distilling complexity into the two or three things that matter most.

Cross-Functional Team Leadership

• Lead and facilitate the cross-functional program team— setting agendas, driving alignment, tracking actions, and ensuring follow-through across all functions.
• Build the relationships across scientific, clinical, CMC, regulatory, and finance functions that allow you to influence without authority, surface the right information, and keep the team moving in the same direction.
• Proactively surface risks, gaps, and interdependencies; bring mitigation options and escalate with solutions, not just problems.
• Manage external partner cadences with CDMOs, CROs, and key consultants — maintaining accountability and alignment across the development ecosystem.

Infrastructure & Operations

• Build the program management infrastructure this company needs from scratch: integrated timelines, decision logs, governance processes, and reporting rhythms that are rigorous without being bureaucratic. You know what needs to be built properly and what can wait.
• Author and maintain core program documents including development plans, meeting minutes, action trackers, assumptions logs, and TPPs — ensuring the organization always has a single, reliable source of program truth.

What You'll Bring

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in a science or health-related field; advanced degree (MS, PhD, or MBA) preferred.
• 7 years of program or project management experience in a biotech or pharmaceutical setting.
• Demonstrated success managing integrated development plans across clinical, CMC, and regulatory functions in an early-stage or resource-constrained environment.
• Direct experience with IND-enabling activities and early-phase clinical development; biologics experience strongly preferred.
• Proven ability to build program management processes from the ground up and a track record of driving cross-functional teams to decisions and results.
• Strong financial acumen, including experience managing program budgets and supporting fundraising or board-level milestone planning.
• Proficiency with project management tools (strong preference for deep Smartsheet and OnePager expertise) and standard platforms (PowerPoint, Excel, MS Teams).

Traits for Success

• Exceptional synthesizer — you can take a complex, multi-variable situation and distill it to the two or three things leadership actually needs to understand to make a decision, then drive that decision through to execution.
• Natural collaborator — you work in close partnership with scientific and clinical leads, complementing their strengths and filling the gaps, without duplicating effort or creating friction.
• Entrepreneurial self-starter who thrives with high autonomy; you don’t wait for structure to exist before getting things done.
• Highly organized and detail-oriented, with the ability to hold the full picture while managing the granular — and the judgment to know which matters more in any given moment.
• Clear, direct communicator who builds trust across scientific, clinical, and business functions through follow-through and candor.
• Energized by early-stage environments — the pace, the ownership, and the direct line between your work and patient impact.
• Comfortable operating as a team of one without losing rigor or momentum.

Title & Level

Level is open and will reflect experience — we anticipate hiring at the Associate Director or Director level. Compensation will be competitive with early-stage biotech norms and will include meaningful equity participation.