Implementation Lead / Program Manager

Description

The company builds one R&D platform that chemists, materials scientists, and biologists use to find, develop, and launch new products faster.

Engineers from MIT and Stanford founded the company, and its customers are enterprise R&D groups in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, advanced materials, and food and beverage. It aims to make industrial R&D an order of magnitude faster.

The team moves quickly, and people take real ownership of their work from the start.

Each implementation has a named team: Account Managers handle the customer relationship, adoption, and growth; Scientific Implementation Managers design the technical solution; and Scientific Implementation team members do the build, with AI agents handling repetitive configuration and setup. You sit at the center, running the project and making sure the team delivers what was scoped on time and within the planned hours.

This is more than project management. You need enough science and platform knowledge to map a lab's real workflows, challenge a design that will fail, and earn the respect of PhD-level researchers. You also need the discipline to run status, stage gates, and sign-offs across several enterprise accounts at once. If you have led scientific software rollouts or run implementations as a consultant, and want to do it with an AI-first delivery team, this role fits.

Your first 90 days: in month 1, learn the platform and the implementation method, including the AI agents used for configuration, and shadow implementations at a scoping workshop, a mid-build status cycle, and a go-live. In month 2, take over project management on one or two live implementations at their next phase boundary, and take on integration scoping and onsite planning from the Account Manager. In month 3, own a new implementation end to end, from scoping through its first go-live, and bring at least one concrete improvement to how implementations are scoped, estimated, or reported on.

Responsibilities

• Own each implementation from scoping through go-live, across every phase.
• Lead scoping with the customer: define requirements, sites, teams, and workflows, and agree on what a realistic first go-live includes, including what falls in and out of each phase.
• Turn the scoping into a phased plan with a timeline, deliverables, and post-sales commitments that the delivery team can carry out.
• Be accountable for on-time go-live in every phase and for the hours spent against the scope.
• Be the person the customer's R&D leadership comes to for the plan, the timeline, and where things stand.
• Run status meetings with the customer and internally, and keep a written status that the Account Manager and leadership can read without asking you.
• Manage stage gates and customer sign-offs so each phase closes before the next opens.
• Plan and run onsites and workshops, from agenda and logistics to who attends from each side.
• Catch scope creep and overruns early, and raise change requests or resourcing requests with clear reasons instead of absorbing them quietly.
• Scope integration requirements with the customer's IT and business teams, and write tickets that Integration Engineering can act on.
• Coordinate the enterprise integrations a go-live depends on, such as data feeds into ERP or other enterprise systems.
• Work with implementation partners and system integrators when a customer brings one, and hold their delivery to the company's standard.
• Direct the Scientific Implementation Managers and Associates on your accounts, deciding who does what and by when.
• Push the team to use AI agents for configuration and setup, and keep people on the parts that need judgment.
• Share what you learn across accounts so scoping, estimates, and playbooks improve for the next implementation.
• Keep the Account Manager informed on progress, risks, and customer sentiment, and escalate to them when an issue needs an executive conversation.
• Plan future phases with the Account Manager, such as when to bring the next R&D team onto the platform.
• At go-live, hand off to the Account Manager and Customer Success with a clear account of what was delivered and what comes next.

Requirements

• 3+ years leading software implementations or digital lab rollouts, either for external clients at a vendor or consultancy, or internally as the project lead who brought an ELN, LIMS, or similar platform into your own R&D organization.
• At least a few of those should be implementations where you owned the plan, the stakeholders, and the outcome end to end.
• A background in chemistry, materials science, biology, chemical engineering, or a related field, enough to scope R&D workflows and hold your own with PhD-level researchers.
• You run status, risks, scope, and sign-offs as a routine habit across several projects at once, without needing to be chased.
• You push back when a timeline, scope, or design does not make sense, including with customers and senior colleagues, and you own the result.
• You already use AI tools in your own work and want a team where agents do a real share of the build. You will be expected to drive their adoption on your accounts.
• Clear, concise writing and presenting for audiences from bench scientists to R&D directors and IT leaders.
• Comfort in a fast-moving company where processes are still being built, and a willingness to help build them.
• Preferred: M.S. or Ph.D. in a scientific or engineering field.
• Preferred: experience implementing or rolling out ELN, LIMS, PLM, or other R&D data platforms, on the vendor side or as the customer's project lead.
• Preferred: experience leading digital initiatives across several sites or regions, including onsite workshops with scientific teams.
• Preferred: experience scoping integrations with ERP or other enterprise systems, and working with IT organizations.
• Nice-to-have: experience working with or managing implementation partners and system integrators.
• Nice-to-have: experience in a regulated or GxP-adjacent environment.
• Nice-to-have: a second language used by customers, such as German, French, or Spanish.

Conditions

Processes are still being set up, so you will help shape how the team works.

Accounts span coatings, polymers, food science, pharma, and more, often within the same week.

The role sits close to delivery leadership, with a path to leading a group of Implementation Program Managers or a larger part of the delivery organization as the team grows.

Benefits

• Competitive base salary, a performance bonus, and meaningful equity.
• Health and dental insurance.
• 401(k) with an employer contribution for US locations.
• Direct access to company leadership on a small, high-caliber team.
• Real ownership: you are the named owner of implementations on accounts that include some of the largest R&D organizations in chemicals, consumer goods, and pharma.
• A role in defining a new delivery model, where agents do much of the configuration and your input shapes the playbook.
• Your input across accounts feeds into how implementations are scoped, priced, and staffed, and into what the product builds next.