Chief Information Officer — Precision-Oncology Portfolio

The mandate

A precision-oncology company was carved out of a larger life-sciences group with transitional access to identity, collaboration, finance, research storage and selected clinical systems. That agreement expires in nine months. The stand-alone company has selected several replacement platforms, but data ownership, migration sequence and cutover responsibility remain unsettled. Research teams have large genomic datasets and reproducible pipelines in parent-managed environments; clinical vendors exchange files through inherited routes; and some administrative processes still rely on accounts that will be disabled at separation.

The technology programme was treated initially as infrastructure procurement. A recent cutover rehearsal showed the true operating risk: service inventories did not match business workflows, leaver records were incomplete across directories, and a critical analysis pipeline depended on a licence tied to the former parent. At the same time, the company is preparing a financing and partnership data room. Investors need reliable evidence without broad access to patient-level or proprietary research information.

The Chief Information Officer will take end-to-end accountability for separation and establish the durable information model beyond it. The remit covers enterprise architecture, identity and access, research computing, clinical-system interfaces, business applications, data lifecycle, service management, cyber partnership and technology vendors. The CIO will not own scientific conclusions or independent security assurance, but must make the environments usable, traceable and supportable for the people who do.

The operating perimeter encompasses approximately 450 employees and material partners across San Diego and international research and clinical relationships. This urgent, unplanned appointment is based on site in San Diego and reports to the Chief Executive or designated executive sponsor. The timeline is contractual; an executive who spends the first quarter commissioning another broad assessment will leave insufficient runway for safe migration.

Why this seat is open

The role became necessary when the technology-separation programme moved from vendor selection to workflow cutover. The head of IT who managed day-to-day services does not have enterprise authority over research, clinical and functional migrations and will remain as an important leader. The board created a CIO seat after the rehearsal exposed dependencies that no existing forum could resolve quickly.

What you will own

• Deliver exit from the transitional-services agreement by the contractual date, with every service mapped to an owner, replacement, migration, retirement or explicitly negotiated extension.
• Govern transfer of genomic, assay, clinical and corporate data, preserving provenance, consent, retention, access and reproducibility while preventing unnecessary duplication.
• Replace inherited identity with joiner, mover, leaver and privileged-access controls spanning employees, contractors, laboratories, vendors and research collaborators.
• Create validated, supported interfaces among clinical vendors and internal data users so active studies continue through cutover without undocumented manual relays.
• Own an annual technology and separation perimeter above USD 100 million and lead internal specialists and partners serving approximately 450 employees.
• Build a financing and partnership data-room service with document ownership, redaction, time-bound access, audit evidence and clean revocation.
• Rationalise selected enterprise applications and licences, making conscious exceptions where migration risk outweighs near-term standardisation benefit.
• Establish service, incident, continuity and vendor governance after separation, with independent cyber and quality leaders able to challenge technology decisions.

The first 12 months

• Days 1–90: Establish the authoritative service and dependency register, reconcile users and privileged access, and run workflow-level cutover tests for research analysis, clinical exchange and finance. Escalate any transition extension before negotiating leverage disappears. Freeze non-essential platform changes competing for the same technical and user capacity.
• Months 4–9: Complete staged migrations, rehearse recovery and revoke unused inherited routes as work moves. Validate high-impact clinical and regulated interfaces, transfer licences and contracts, and place the diligence environment into controlled operation. Train named business owners to accept or reject cutover based on evidence, not programme optimism.
• Months 10–12: Exit remaining transitional services, verify access removal and data disposition with the former parent, and stabilise the stand-alone service model. Close cutover incidents and temporary controls, deliver a board-approved information architecture and reduce the vendor and application estate where duplication no longer protects the separation.

What the board will measure

• Contractual separation completed on time, with extensions limited to risks explicitly approved and priced before the deadline.
• No material loss of research reproducibility, clinical data exchange, patient privacy or regulated record integrity through migration and cutover.
• Complete reconciliation and timely revocation of inherited, contractor and privileged access across the new estate.
• Critical workflow recovery demonstrated within approved time and data-loss limits under realistic cutover and outage tests.
• Diligence materials available promptly to authorised users, with no inappropriate exposure of patient-level, third-party or reserved programme information.
• Technology spend, vendors and applications moved from temporary separation cost towards a transparent stand-alone run rate.

The person

You are a CIO, divisional CIO, technology-separation leader or senior research-technology executive with 22–28 years of experience in biotechnology, biopharma, diagnostics or another regulated data-intensive sector. You have completed a carve-out, merger separation or transitional-service exit involving live scientific or regulated operations. You have controlled at least USD 100 million of annual technology and programme spend and led services for at least 400 employees.

You understand why file migration is not data migration. You can test provenance, permissions, retention, pipeline dependencies and reproducibility with scientists, and validation, audit trail and vendor interfaces with clinical teams. You have built identity and access for mixed employee, contractor and collaborator populations and can show how privileged access was actually reconciled and revoked.

The board will consider leaders from precision medicine, genomics, clinical research, diagnostics or adjacent regulated industries. Direct biotechnology experience is strongly preferred, but a candidate from another sector must demonstrate comparable research-data scale and regulated workflows. A pure cyber background is insufficient unless accompanied by broad CIO accountability; a general enterprise-systems background is insufficient without scientific computing depth.

This is an on-site San Diego role with international vendor and collaborator engagement. Candidates must be prepared to make early sequence and risk decisions, support the existing IT leadership team and distinguish a time-bound separation control from the architecture the company should retain afterwards.

Compensation and terms

The expected base salary is USD 360,000–480,000, accompanied by annual incentive and long-term participation. Measures will focus on safe separation, workflow continuity, access control, stand-alone cost and the quality of the resulting information estate. This is a permanent appointment. Relocation, appropriate notice and evidenced forfeited awards may be considered, subject to the contractual timeline.

Confidentiality

The company, former parent, transitional services and system details are confidential. Identifying information will be shared only after fit is established and the required protections are signed. Candidates must not contact potential vendors or use known carve-out activity to infer the client.

Each response must contain no more than 49 words.