Director of Systems Engineering

Join our highly collaborative team working on an innovative platform as a hands‑on Director of Systems Engineering. You are a technical leader with strong background in complex instrument and biological development who thrives in early‑stage environments, enjoys rolling up your sleeves, and can move seamlessly between system architecture, implementation, testing, troubleshooting, and team leadership.

You will be at the forefront of ensuring the launch success of our RAPTOR™️ platform, guiding expansion of our custom application development and building the systems engineering function at Pleno. In this role, you will live at the intersection of Software, Hardware, Assay Development, Bioinformatics, Operations, and Manufacturing team functions. You can drive clear system requirements, ensure smooth handoffs between teams, deliver scalable system testing, and reduce integration frictions. You excel at fostering strong collaboration and communication between multidisciplinary teams and drive consensus within the R&D team.

This is an opportunity to join a team working on breaking new ground in genomics and multi-omic biomarker detection. As we move from early development into scale, manufacturing transfer, and expanded customer use, we need a strong leader to close integration gaps, resolve unclear ownership, and identify weak system boundaries. You’ll help shape how the platform evolves, how teams work together, and how technical decisions made today hold up as we grow and expand because you’ve seen where systems fail, and you’ve owned the tradeoffs.

In this role, you will:

• Develop and execute systems engineering and integration strategies across multiple programs, aligning with overall product and platform objectives.
• Lead cross‑functional teams to define, trace, and verify system requirements, balancing fast delivery with long‑term scalability and platform evolution.
• Represent systems engineering at the R&D leadership level, clearly communicating risks, dependencies, and readiness to executive stakeholders.
• Establish and scale systems engineering processes, best practices, and technical standards, including decision frameworks, test/integration protocols, and risk management.
• Drive system‑level issue resolution by leading root cause analysis and coordinating rapid responses across software, hardware, assay development, and data workflows.
• Oversee system design to ensure performance, scalability, reliability, and regulatory compliance, making pragmatic tradeoffs between speed, risk, and technical debt.

To be successful in this role, you have:

Technical Expertise

• Strong hands‑on experience in complex instrument system architecture, requirements definition, integration, verification, and system bring‑up
• Technical expertise in system‑level requirements gathering and system test, spanning both hardware and software domains
• Industry experience in biotechnology, life sciences, or medical devices, with familiarity in genetics, genomics, or molecular biology workflows
• Familiarity with software development practices and sprint cycles, including the ability to improve tools, processes, and handoffs between software development and systems teams
• Experience with data aggregation, quantitative computing, or data‑driven system analysis with tools like JMP, etc (plus)
• Great attention to detail, spirit of collaboration, and positive attitude when dealing with intricate problems under pressing timelines
• 3–5+ years of experience as a people leader.
• Proven ability to operate effectively in high‑ambiguity, early‑stage environments, and make decisions with limited information.
• Excellent communication skills and comfort collaborating across disciplines.
• The ability to operate simultaneously at system‑detail and organizational‑strategy levels, knowing when to dive deep and when to delegate
• Demonstrated success scaling systems engineering practices in growing or early‑stage organizations across multiple programs
• Bias toward enabling teams, not becoming a single‑threaded technical bottleneck
• Strong technical judgment under uncertainty, with a track record of making irreversible decisions at the right level of rigor
• Ability to translate complex system risks into clear, actionable executive communication

Education & Experience:

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, Systems Engineering, or a related field.
• 10–15+ years of experience in systems engineering and at least 3‑5 years of related leadership roles with minimum experience thresholds adjusted for education level (PhD: 6+ years, Master’s: 8+ years, Bachelor’s: 10+ years)

Note: This position will require regular onsite participation at our office/lab in San Diego, CA - to apply you should be resident in the greater San Diego County area. We are not able to consider relocation at this time.

The compensation range presented allows for the possibility of varied combinations of education and experience. Compensation decisions are dependent on several factors including, but not limited to, level of the position, skills, knowledge and experience of a candidate, internal equity, and alignment with comparable market data.

The range for this position covers considered levels from $170,000 to $220,000.

About Pleno

Pleno is a multidisciplinary team of scientists and technologists focused on collaboration and asking questions. We strive to find the best, and most meaningful answers for biochemistry and engineering problems in our mission to build a novel multi‑omic instrument platform that will revolutionize biological target detection for a wide array of meaningful applications.

We value our Pleno people and each person's wellbeing is important to us, so in addition to offering industry competitive compensation, we also offer the following:

• Equity - everyone at Pleno has a stake in our success
• Generous company‑sponsored contribution to health, dental and vision coverage
• Company contributions to life insurance, short term and long‑term disability and 401k
• Flexible Paid Time Off - plus 11 paid holidays including a winter break company‑wide close
• Parental Leave - we value our families and include generous parental leave and wage replacement
• Free catered onsite meals twice weekly
• Fitness and wellness facilities
• Regular opportunities to spend social time together like happy hours & team building events - we stop to celebrate our wins

We are hiring for positions onsite at our office/lab in San Diego, CA – all positions are full time employment . All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, national origin, or on the basis of disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation. In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form.