Director, Head of Product Development

What if…What if… you could join an organization that creates, resources, and builds life sciences companies that invent breakthrough technologies to transform health care?

In today’s healthcare system, disease diagnosis often relies on invasive procedures, such as biopsies, which enable direct interrogation of cellular and tissue health at the suspected source of disease. Due to their invasiveness, cost, and inconvenience to patients, these procedures are often performed only after symptomatic disease has emerged, limiting the ability to intervene earlier in disease progression when therapies may be most effective.

Flagship Labs 103, Inc. is a privately held early-stage company developing advanced molecular technologies designed to detect highly sensitive, cell-resolved biological signals from minimally invasive biospecimens. By combining novel molecular profiling approaches with next-generation assay technologies, FL103 aims to enable earlier disease detection, longitudinal disease monitoring, and improved patient stratification across oncology, neurodegenerative disease, and other major disease areas.

FL103 was founded by Flagship Pioneering, an innovation enterprise dedicated to originating and developing companies that invent breakthrough technologies to transform health care, agriculture, and sustainability. Since Flagship’s founding in 2000, the firm has originated and fostered more than 100 scientific ventures including Moderna Therapeutics, Generate Biomedicines, and Indigo Agriculture.

Position Summary:

FL103 is seeking a highly hands-on scientific and operational leader to serve as Director of Product Development. This individual will play a foundational role in translating FL103’s early assay and biological discoveries into robust, scalable, and clinically meaningful diagnostic assays.

Working closely with the company’s platform and discovery teams, this leader will drive development and optimization of highly multiplexed molecular assays designed for plasma-based applications. The role will focus on improving assay sensitivity, specificity, reproducibility, and overall analytical performance while establishing the operational and technical foundation for future clinical deployment.

The ideal candidate will bring deep expertise in translational assay development within molecular diagnostics, liquid biopsy, or advanced biomarker platforms and will have experience converting complex biological signals into deployable diagnostic workflows. This person should thrive in highly collaborative, fast-moving environments and be excited to operate as a player-coach — remaining close to the science while building and mentoring a growing product development organization.

This is a rare opportunity to join a Flagship-founded company at the earliest stages and help build a transformational diagnostic platform at the intersection of molecular biology, ultra-sensitive detection technologies, and translational medicine.

Key Responsibilities

Product Development & Assay Optimization

Lead development and optimization of highly multiplexed molecular assays for plasma-based applications

Translate early biological and assay signals into robust, reproducible, and clinically meaningful diagnostic outputs

Identify and resolve sources of technical variability, assay artifacts, and background signal

Drive improvements in assay sensitivity, specificity, multiplexing performance, and reproducibility

Develop analytical workflows, assay QC frameworks, and validation strategies to support future clinical deployment

Help establish scalable assay development pipelines and best practices across product development activities

Translational Development

Partner closely with platform and discovery teams to prioritize and advance clinically actionable programs

Support development of assays across multiple disease areas including oncology and neurodegenerative diseases

Build the technical and operational foundation for future CLIA/LDT deployment and clinical validation activities