Illumina Ventures Labs is an early-stage company creation and investment engine with a presence in San Francisco Bay Area and Cambridge UK. Our differentiated offering provides capital, sequencing, mentorship, and fully equipped genomics labs to accelerate value creation from new company formation to Series A startups.

Role:

We are seeking a dedicated and experienced laboratory manager to join Illumina Ventures Labs in the UK. In this position, you’ll take ownership of our UK lab operations and be responsible for the maintenance and management of our equipment and facilities, including Health and Safety requirements. This role is a full time, permanent position based at our labs at Granta Park.

Tasks and Responsibilities:

Lab Operation and Technical Expertise

• Point of contact for the day-to-day operations of the UK lab site, ensuring compliance with safety guidelines, protocols, and regulatory requirements including COSHH, risk assessments, and company-specific safety protocols.
• Perform lab administrative functions such as facilities coordination, reagent ordering, instrument upkeep, and room bookings.
• Optimization of existing lab methods and processes, including infrastructure and technical capabilities of the lab, ensuring any operational or quality issues are addressed.

Documentation and Reporting

• Maintain up-to-date records of equipment calibration, consumable inventory, and safety compliance.
• Provide regular updates to senior management on lab operations, resource requirements, and key findings.
• Tracking internal and portfolio expenses, ensuring the lab plan and budget are met.

Support R&D Activities

• Ability to provide NGS training and to support genomics startups in collaboration with internal and external experts.
• Work with the genomics startups to troubleshoot experiments as required.

Person Specification:

Essential

• Bachelors or Masters Degree in genomics, bioinformatics, biology, chemistry or related.
• Proven experience as a lab manager or similar role in a biotech, pharmaceutical or academic research lab.
• Technical experience in a laboratory setting, ideally with Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and Illumina platforms.
• Experience in Health and Safety, specifically Biological Safety.

Desirable

• Experience of budgetary management, and capable of working with multiple contractors.
• Adaptable, collaborative, independent candidate who is comfortable assuming responsibility in fast-paced work environments.
• Must be detail oriented and possess excellent communication.