Description

Job Title:

Senior Manager, IT Infrastructure

Location:

San Diego, CA / Hybrid

Position type:

FLSA:

Full time

Exempt

Department:

Finance ID:

IT Security, Infrastructure and EA

9180-2024-2-P

Strive to Bring a Profound Difference to our Patients

At Avidity Biosciences, we are passionate about the impact of every employee in realizing our vision of improving people’s lives by delivering a new class of RNA therapeutics. Avidity is revolutionizing the field of RNA with its proprietary AOCs, which are designed to combine the specificity of monoclonal antibodies with the precision of oligonucleotide therapies to address targets and diseases previously unreachable with existing RNA therapies. If you are a committed, solution-oriented thinker, join us in making a difference and become part of our growing culture that is integrated, collaborative, agile and focused on the needs of patients. 

Avidity Biosciences, Inc.'s mission is to profoundly improve people's lives by delivering a new class of RNA therapeutics - Antibody Oligonucleotide Conjugates (AOCs™). Utilizing its proprietary AOC platform, Avidity demonstrated the first-ever successful targeted delivery of RNA into muscle and is leading the field with clinical development programs for three rare muscle diseases: myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1), Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). Avidity is broadening the reach of AOCs with its advancing and expanding pipeline, including programs in cardiology and immunology through internal discovery efforts and key partnerships. Avidity is headquartered in San Diego, CA. For more information about our AOC platform, clinical development pipeline, and people, please visit www.aviditybiosciences.com and engage with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The Opportunity

The Senior Manager, IT Infrastructure is a key leadership role responsible for overseeing Avidity’s IT infrastructure strategy, operations, and optimization. This role ensures high availability, scalability, and security of Avidity’s IT environment by integrating on-premise infrastructures, lab environments, virtualization, cloud infrastructure, and security into a cohesive strategy that aligns with the company's overall IT goals. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, including cybersecurity, enterprise architecture, IT service management, business stakeholders, clinical, regulatory, and research teams to ensure IT infrastructure supports Avidity’s biotech operations and compliance needs.

This role requires a technical leader with strong hands-on expertise in infrastructure reference architecture, virtualization, and cloud management. The ideal candidate will be capable of managing a team and reporting key IT metrics such as overall disaster preparedness, backup mean time to recovery, and monitoring and alerting status. Additionally, you will play a crucial role in overseeing Avidity’s technical and physical changes, ensuring smooth planning, execution, and infrastructure stability. This includes coordinating IT asset relocation, minimizing downtime, ensuring robust connectivity, and implementing necessary infrastructure enhancements to support long-term operational efficiency.

What You Will Contribute

Lead end-to-end IT infrastructure operations, including on-premise, lab environments, virtualization, cloud infrastructure, and security.Develop and execute scalable infrastructure strategies to align with Avidity’s security, compliance, and business needs, ensuring adherence to biotech-specific regulatory frameworks such as Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and Good x Practice (GxP).Drive initiatives for cost optimization, automation, and modernization of infrastructure services.Oversee disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity plans (BCP), ensuring strong preparedness and efficient mean time to recovery (MTTR). Integrate cyber resilience planning and incident response strategies to enhance infrastructure security and ensure rapid recovery from disruptions. Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) such as recovery time objectives (RTO), recovery point objectives (RPO), and system uptime metrics to measure effectiveness and drive continuous improvement.Ensure robust monitoring and alerting frameworks are in place and functioning effectively.Manage cloud services (Azure, AWS) and support a hybrid IT model with strong governance.Provide leadership for virtualization efforts, ensuring optimal compute, storage, and networking resource utilization.Oversee on-premise networking, ensuring connectivity and security but with a balanced focus.Lead and support infrastructure components of the company’s building move, ensuring seamless relocation and post-move management.Partner with security teams to align Identity and Access Management (IAM), Privileged Access Management (PAM), and Security Operations Center (SOC) operations with infrastructure best practices.Work with service desk and IT teams to improve system reliability, monitoring, and incident response.Manage vendor relationships, negotiate contracts, and oversee third-party infrastructure service providers by setting clear service-level agreements (Service-Level Agreements (SLAs), ensuring adherence to security and compliance standards, and regularly assessing vendor performance against key performance indicators (KPIs) such as uptime, response time, and cost efficiency.Provide mentorship and leadership to IT engineers and support teams.

What We Seek

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field (or equivalent work experience).8+ years of experience (ideally in IT infrastructure roles), with 4+ years in a leadership or managerial capacity.Experience in biotech, pharmaceuticals, or life sciences, particularly in managing IT infrastructure challenges related to lab environments, data security, and compliance, is strongly preferred.Strong expertise in on-premise infrastructures, virtualization, lab environments, cloud infrastructure (Azure, AWS), and security.Proven ability to monitor, alert, and report on infrastructure health, ensuring resilience and performance.Experience managing building moves from an IT infrastructure standpoint, ensuring a smooth transition and sustained operational integrity. Prior experience in similar-scale moves is preferred, with a strong ability to manage logistics, minimize downtime, and ensure a seamless post-move infrastructure setup.Ability to manage and report on disaster preparedness and backup recovery metrics (Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR), Recovery Time Objective (RTO), and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) (RPO)).Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills.Azure Solutions Architect / AWS Certified Solutions Architect or equivalent experienceVMware VCP / Cisco CCNP or equivalent experience (for virtualization and networking needs)ITIL, PMP, or CISSP or equivalent experience (for process-driven infrastructure leadership)

 

What We will Provide to You:The base salary range for this role is $180,500 - $199,500 The final compensation will be commensurate with such factors as relevant experience, skillset, internal equity and market factors.Avidity offers competitive compensation and benefits which includes the opportunity for annual and spot bonuses, stock options and RSUs, as well as a 401(k) with an employer match. In addition, the comprehensive wellness program includes coverage for medical, dental, vision, and LTD, and four weeks of time off.A commitment to learning and development which includes a variety of programming internally developed by and for Avidity employees, opportunities for job-specific training offered by industry, and an education reimbursement program.

 

 

Avidity Biosciences

10578 Science Center Dr. Suite 125

San Diego, CA

92121

O: 858-401-7900

F: 858-401-7901