Senior Director, Facilities & Engineering (Cell Therapy Manufacturing)

We’re here for one reason and one reason only – to cure cancer. Every moment is dedicated to developing treatments and every action moves us one step closer to our goal. We’ve made incredible scientific breakthroughs and our pioneering personalized CAR T-cell therapies have changed the paradigm. But we're not finished yet.

Join Kite, as we make even bigger advances in cancer therapies, and help shape where our business and medical science goes next.

We believe every employee deserves a great leader. People Leaders are the cornerstone to the employee experience at Gilead and Kite. As a people leader now or in the future, you are the key driver in evolving our culture and creating an environment where every employee feels included, developed and empowered to fulfil their aspirations. Join Kite and help create more tomorrows.

Job Description

Senior Director, Facilities & Engineering (Cell Therapy Manufacturing)

Position Summary

The Senior Director, Facilities & Engineering (Cell Therapy Manufacturing) is a strategic, hands-on leader responsible for keeping our site running safely, reliably, and in full compliance—so our teams can deliver life-changing therapies without interruption. You will own end-to-end performance across facilities engineering, maintenance, calibration, utilities, and site services, and you will set the long-term roadmap for asset lifecycle, resilience, and capacity in a highly regulated cGMP environment.

In this role, you will lead an organization of approximately 50 employees and a significant contractor population. You’ll build a high-performing, safety-first culture with clear accountability, strong technical capability, and disciplined execution. You will also serve as the senior owner for key service providers—setting expectations, governing performance through metrics, and driving continuous improvement in quality, responsiveness, and cost.

What you’ll do

As member of the Site Leadership team, you will lead facilities and engineering strategy and day-to-day execution across the site, ensuring safe operations, inspection readiness, and reliable utilities and infrastructure to support manufacturing and QC labs.

1) Site Reliability, Compliance & Operational Excellence

• Provide overall leadership for site engineering, maintenance, calibration, and facilities services to ensure manufacturing continuity and GMP compliance.

• Ensure critical utilities and systems (e.g., HVAC, automation/controls, compressed gases, cryogenic infrastructure, temperature controls) are robust, qualified, maintained, and fit for purpose.

• Establish and sustain strong preventive maintenance and calibration programs with right-first-time documentation and inspection readiness.

• Maintain compliance with applicable codes/standards and good practices, including cGMP/GLP expectations where relevant.

• Accountability for the problem solving of complex, high-impact facility and equipment issues—driving root cause analysis and durable corrective actions.

2) Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) Leadership

• Role-model a proactive safety culture across employees and contractors, with strong risk assessment and safe systems of work.

• Partner with cross-functional teams to embed safety into planning, shutdowns, and project execution—especially for high-risk activities.

• Drive the implementation of sustainability initiatives locally, and in alignment with the global network strategy, (energy, utilities, waste, and emissions reduction), balancing compliance, resilience, and cost.

3) Capital Projects, Engineering Strategy & Lifecycle Management

• Set the site engineering strategy and multi-year roadmap for asset lifecycle, resilience, capacity, and modernization aligned to business priorities.

• Lead CAPEX planning, governance, and delivery—from scope and business case through design, procurement, construction, commissioning/qualification/validation, and close-out.

• Build pragmatic contracting and procurement strategies, maintaining schedule and budget discipline with transparent stakeholder communication.

• Ensure robust design review, change control, and risk management so projects meet internal standards and external requirements.

• Own contractor strategy and performance across outsourced services (maintenance, calibration, pest control, and more), building strong partnerships and clear accountability.

4) People Leadership & Organizational Development

• Lead, coach, and develop a multi-disciplinary organization (~50 employees plus contractors), building strong leaders and deep technical bench strength.

• Set clear direction, priorities, and operating rhythms; create effective resource plans, talent development, and succession plans.

• Foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement across Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain and other stakeholders.

How you’ll partner

• Drive collaboration within the Site Leadership Team and with the relevant functional leaders across Manufacturing, Quality, QC Labs, Supply Chain, EHS, Finance, and Procurement, locally or globally.

• Manage External partnership including engineering firms, contractors, OEMs, and other relevant stakeholders.

• Represent Kite EU BV with key external parties including regulatory, city, Business Park, and state agencies as needed for facilities and infrastructure topics.

Required qualifications

• BS degree in Engineering and minimum of 12 years of relevant experience in related field.

• A MA/MBA degree can be substituted for 2 years of related experience.

• A Ph.D. degree can be substituted for 4 years of related experience.

What you bring

• 12+ years of progressive experience in facilities/engineering leadership within regulated environments, with a track record of building and managing high-performing teams.

• Deep expertise in utilities and critical systems, maintenance and calibration programs, and contractor-led service models.

• Demonstrated ownership of OPEX/CAPEX planning and delivery, including project execution through construction and commissioning/qualification.

• Sound judgment and comfort operating in ambiguity—able to make decisions when precedent may not exist.

• Strong cross-functional leadership and stakeholder management, translating business needs into engineering strategy and execution.

Leadership strengths

• Strategic thinking with operational rigor: you can build multi-year roadmaps and still drive daily execution excellence.

• People-first leadership: you develop leaders, build engagement, and create clear expectations and accountability.

• Metrics-driven management: you use governance, KPIs/SLAs, and disciplined cost control to improve performance.

• Influence and partnership: you collaborate across functions and levels to deliver results.

What Success Looks Like (12–18 months)

• Improved utilities and critical systems reliability, enabling stable manufacturing throughput and QC lab readiness.

• Stronger preventive maintenance and calibration performance with sustained inspection-ready documentation.

• A contractor governance model with clear KPIs/SLAs and demonstrable gains in responsiveness, quality, and cost/value.

• On-time, on-budget delivery of prioritized capital projects with robust commissioning/qualification and handover.

• A strengthened, safety-first F&E organization with clear structure, capable leaders, and a culture of continuous improvement.

Kite is a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development of innovative cancer immunotherapies with a goal of providing rapid, long-term durable response and eliminating the burden of chronic care. The company is focused on chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and T cell receptor (TCR) engineered cell therapies designed to empower the immune system's ability to recognize and kill tumors. Kite is based in Santa Monica, CA. For more information on Kite, please visit www.kitepharma.com . Sign up to follow @KitePharma on Twitter at www.twitter.com/kitepharma .

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)

It is the policy of Gilead Sciences, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates (collectively "Gilead" or the "Company") to recruit select and employ the most qualified persons available for positions throughout the Company.  Except if otherwise provided by applicable law, all  employment actions relating to issues such as compensation, benefits, transfers, layoffs, returns from layoffs, company-sponsored training, education assistance, social and recreational programs are administered on a non-discriminatory basis (i.e. without regard to protected characteristics or prohibited grounds, which may include an individual’s gender, race, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, creed, physical or mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, medical condition, veteran status, and age, unless such protection is prohibited by federal, state, municipal, provincial, local or other applicable laws).  Gilead also prohibits discrimination based on any other characteristics protected by applicable laws.

For Current Kite Pharma Employees and Contractors:

Please apply via the Internal Career Opportunities portal in Workday.