Administrative Partner, Software Development Product Management and AI/ML group

Administrative Partner

What if the work you did every day could impact the lives of people you know? Or all of humanity? At Illumina, we are expanding access to genomic technology to realize health equity for billions of people around the world. Our efforts enable life-changing discoveries that are transforming human health through the early detection and diagnosis of diseases and new treatment options for patients. Working at Illumina means being part of something bigger than yourself. Every person, in every role, has the opportunity to make a difference. Surrounded by extraordinary people, inspiring leaders, and world changing projects, you will do more and become more than you ever thought possible.

Illumina is seeking a high-judgment Administrative Partner to act as a force multiplier for leadership teams under two VPs in the Illumina Software Organization. The right person is a business partner who makes the VP and leadership teams meaningfully more effective every week.

The Administrative Partner will own the operating rhythm of a fast-moving software organization that ships globally, drives Illumina's informatics revenue, and operates across San Diego and other US locations, the UK, Israel, and Singapore. The role demands independent judgment, a bias for action, and the comfort to coordinate across product, engineering, commercial, finance, legal, and the broader executive team without direct authority.

This role will increasingly manage digital agents and modern productivity tooling alongside humans. Comfort using AI to draft, summarize, route, and prep and judgment about when not to is part of the job.

Who We're Looking For

A partner who:

• Treats the team's time, attention, and reputation as a portfolio to be actively managed, not a calendar to be filled.
• Reads a room (or a thread) and figures out what matters before being told.
• Wants to organize the team, not just the executive pulling forward decisions, clearing blockers, surfacing the things that are about to slip.
• Communicates crisply in writing. Edits down. Notices when something is unclear and asks.
• Is energized by software, AI tools, and continuous improvement of how work gets done.

Key Responsibilities

Operating Rhythm & Executive Effectiveness

• Own the executive's calendar as a strategic instrument: protect deep-work time, kill or delegate low-value meetings, and ensure the right cross-functional partners are in the room when decisions get made.
• Drive the operating cadence of the leadership team staff meetings, skip-levels, quarterly reviews, ELT prep including agendas, pre-reads, follow-ups, and decision tracking.
• Maintain a working understanding of the team's top priorities and active programs so that scheduling and prep decisions reflect what actually matters.

Meeting & Event Execution

• Plan and execute high-visibility meetings, off-sites, customer engagements, and team events end-to-end. Set the agenda structure, secure logistics, manage tech, and own the follow-through.
• Coordinate distributed meetings across time zones (PT, ET, GMT, IST, SGT) with operational excellence.
• Manage content review schedules.

Stakeholder & Communications Partnership

• Serve as a trusted liaison to other VPs' offices, C-Level staff, board-adjacent forums, and external partners. Build the network that makes things happen faster.
• Triage inbound asks (email, Teams, calls). Respond directly when appropriate, route when not, and surface what the executive actually needs to see.
• Draft and edit internal communications at an executive voice and tone.

Tooling, AI, & Continuous Improvement

• Evaluate, adopt, and operate modern productivity tools and AI agents that augment the role (calendar/email triage, briefing generation, follow-up tracking, travel automation).
• Partner with the executive on improving the operating model itself not just running today's process but proposing better ones.
• Maintain accurate context (org charts, contact lists, project trackers, decision logs) so that new team members ramp without re-discovering basics.

What This Role Is Not

• It is not a 1:1 calendar-only role. We expect proactive, cross-team partnership.
• It is not an "expense report and travel" role. Those are baseline competencies, not the value.
• It is not a passive role. We want someone who pushes back, raises hands, and proposes changes.

Requirements

• Typically requires a minimum of 4 - 6 years of administrative or executive-support experience in a mid- to large-sized organization, including direct experience supporting VP-level executives.
• Proven track record supporting senior leaders with complex, distributed, global teams.
• Strong written communication; able to draft, edit, and ghostwrite at an executive level.
• High proficiency with Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and modern collaboration tooling.
• Demonstrated experience with calendar management, complex travel, event planning, executive presentation prep, and expense administration.
• Comfort experimenting with and adopting new tools (including AI / agentic tools) to improve how the role is performed.
• Discretion and trust handling highly confidential information.
• Based in San Diego; on-site 4 days/week.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in software organizations or a comparable fast-moving technical environment.
• Prior support of leaders driving large change programs (launches, reorganizations, strategic shifts).
• Experience working across global, distributed, matrixed teams.
• Familiarity with software product management, engineering, or commercial operating cadences.
• Demonstrated curiosity and fluency with AI/automation tools applied to executive support work.

Education

• Bachelor's degree preferred. High school diploma required.