About Violet Research Institute

Violet Research Institute (VRI) is building the future of personalized medicine for patients with genetic diseases. We're at the frontier of a new era in medicine — one where treatments can be designed for individual patients based on their unique biology. Recent breakthroughs in science, engineering, and regulatory pathways have made this possible, but much of this work remains nascent and distributed across disparate efforts globally. We're unifying, refining, and scaling these efforts into a cohesive platform. For each patient we serve, we deeply understand their biology, then design and manufacture a targeted treatment that can be delivered in months instead of years.

We combine the urgency and execution mindset of a startup with the mission-driven openness of a nonprofit, allowing us to collaborate broadly and move quickly on behalf of the patients we serve. We've brought together leading researchers, engineers, and organizations across omics, therapeutic design, manufacturing, clinical care, and AI to move from insight to action as quickly as possible.

VRI is founded by the family of our first patient, Violet, and is led by Michael Buckley, Siranush Babakhanova and Steve Turner. Our team is deeply cross-disciplinary and first-principles driven. We value builders, experts, and generalists who are excited to work across domains, challenge conventional approaches, and increase access to personalized medicine.

The Role

Our founder, scientific lead, and a small senior team are spending too much time on coordination instead of judgment work. We need someone senior enough to design the operating system across our programs, hold CROs and vendors accountable, run cross-functional rhythms, and own the data and decision infrastructure end to end. 

Said directly: we need more people who can manage, not more people to manage.

This is not a project coordinator role. The successful candidate will design systems, set standards, and direct junior staff and CROs. They will not hand-organize raw assay data. They will decide how raw assay data must be organized, by whom, and by when, and enforce it.

What you will own

• Decision and to-do system across programs. A single source of truth for what is being done, by whom, by when, why, and what comes next.
• Data infrastructure and standards. Repeatable formats for raw assay data, ASO design files, in vitro and in vivo readouts, and CRO deliverables. You direct the bioinformatician and a junior data hire to execute against those standards.
• CRO and vendor program management. WuXi, Synoligo, ChemGenes, n-Lorem, and a growing roster. Schedules, deliverables, QC of incoming data, escalation when timelines slip.
• Screen and study orchestration. Partner with the lead scientist on ASO screen plans (target panels, controls, replicates, readouts), confirm vendor compatibility, and prevent avoidable rework.
• Meeting and decision discipline. Weekly program reviews, advisor calls, regulatory check-ins. Agendas, decisions captured, follow-ups closed.

Hiring and onboarding for the operations team beneath you.Light regulatory and finance interface alongside our existing IND lead and budget owner.

Goals for the first 90 days

• Audit the current operating model across SYT1 ASO 1, ASO 2 screen, the cocktail program, and the siRNA exploratory work. Tell us what is broken.
• Stand up a single program tracker and decision log that the founder, lead scientist, and senior advisors actually use.
• Define the raw-data standard for assay outputs (knockdown, off-target, tox, PK readouts) and have it adopted across at least two CROs.
• Take ownership of the next ASO 2 screen plan from a process standpoint, partnered with the lead scientist on scientific design.
• Identify the one or two operational gaps that, if closed, save the most senior-team time, and close them.

Qualifications

Required

• 10+ years in drug discovery or development operations, with at least 3 years in a leadership role at a biotech, CRO, or academic translational program.
• Direct experience running oligonucleotide, siRNA, gene therapy, or comparable preclinical-to-IND programs end to end.
• Track record of building operational systems from scratch in a small organization.
• Comfort directing senior PhD scientists without being one. Credibility comes from clarity, not titles.
• Vendor and CRO management at the level where you have caught a CRO doing something wrong and made them fix it.
• Bias toward written, structured, async communication. Decisions captured in writing. Status visible without a meeting.
• Comfort working where the founder and lead scientist will challenge premises, including yours, and expect the same in return.

Preferred

• Familiarity with bDNA / QuantiGene, ddPCR, qPCR artifacts in nucleic acid quantification, and CNS ASO tox readouts.
• Experience inside a small biotech, founder-led nonprofit or intensely mission driven organization.
• Working knowledge of cloud data infrastructure (GCP, AWS) and basic familiarity with bioinformatics workflows.

Behavioral Essentials

• Execute independently from loosely specified tasks — you are self-directing, not waiting for a detailed brief
• Ask for help only when truly blocked, communicating clearly what is needed and what you have already tried
• Thrive in early-stage, ambiguous, high-pace environments where the path is built as you walk it
• Mission-driven with genuine, active care for patient impact (a daily operating principle at VRI)

Disqualifying signals

• Career is primarily process for the sake of process. You cannot point to a scientific decision your work changed.
• You expect the science team to come to you with structured tickets. They will not. You design the intake.
• You need consensus before acting. We move faster than that.

AI, Tools & Operating Environment

At VRI we genuinely embrace AI at every step of the process. Claude and other AI tools are used throughout the day, across every function. Computational fluency and comfort with AI-assisted analysis and literature synthesis are expected. If you treat AI as a novelty or an occasional aid, this is not the right environment.

How We Hire

We are looking to hire immediately and are moving quickly. Our anticipated process can take as little as 5 days: Apply → Initial Recruiter Call → Hiring Manager Interview → Technical Stakeholder Interview → Executive Director Interview → Offer.