Senior Director, Corporate Strategy (San Diego / Hybrid)

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Position Title: Senior Director, Corporate Strategy

Function: Enterprise Strategy

Location: San Diego, California (Hybrid). This is a full-time role, Monday through Friday, with an expectation of 2–3 in-office days per week and additional on-site presence as needed. The individual must reside in the San Diego area and be able to commute to our corporate offices. Relocation assistance is available and should be completed within a twelve (12) month period or a mutually agreed upon time.

Reports To: Vice President, Enterprise Strategy

FLSA Status: Exempt

Position Summary:

The Senior Director, Corporate Strategy is a senior member of the Enterprise Strategy team who leads some of Illumina’s most consequential enterprise strategy efforts and serves as a trusted strategic advisor to senior executives. The role helps define Illumina’s long-term direction and strategic priorities, converts ambiguous leadership questions into clearly framed decisions, builds the fact base needed to evaluate alternatives, and develops recommendations that make major choices and trade-offs explicit.

Operating in a global, matrixed, science- and technology-driven environment, the Senior Director independently leads high-stakes work involving the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) and, when appropriate, the Board. The role integrates market, customer, scientific, technology, competitive, operational, and financial perspectives; maintains an independent enterprise point of view; and leads through influence across R&D, Product, Commercial, Finance, Corporate Development, Medical, Operations, and regional leadership. Business and functional leaders own execution; Corporate Strategy supports decision clarity, alignment, and follow-through without owning enterprise transformation or day-to-day implementation.

Essential Functions:

The following are the essential functions of the role. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform these functions.

• Lead enterprise strategy development. Help define and evolve Illumina’s long-term direction and enterprise strategic priorities. Translate market, customer, scientific, technology, competitive, and financial developments into implications for Illumina, and connect enterprise aspirations to a coherent set of strategic choices.
• Frame ambiguous executive decisions. Convert broad or unclear leadership concerns into defined decisions, meaningful alternatives, decision criteria, and focused analytical workplans. Identify the questions that matter most rather than accepting a predetermined scope.
• Lead high-priority strategic initiatives. Independently lead cross-enterprise strategy efforts sponsored by the CEO, Executive Team, or Vice President, Enterprise Strategy—from initial framing through recommendation and executive decision. Topics may include growth strategy, business-model evolution, new-market entry, technology disruption, competitive response, enterprise capability choices, or other major strategic questions.
• Build a trusted enterprise fact base. Integrate market models, customer insight, competitive intelligence, scientific and technology perspectives, internal performance, and financial analysis. Pressure-test assumptions, distinguish evidence from organizational opinion, and partner with specialist teams while remaining accountable for the overall strategic conclusion.
• Develop alternatives and make trade-offs explicit. Create credible strategic options rather than presenting a single predetermined answer. Quantify growth, investment, risk, organizational requirements, and opportunity cost where possible, and recommend what Illumina should start, stop, accelerate, deprioritize, or sequence differently.
• Integrate enterprise perspectives. Draw on relevant functional and regional expertise while preserving an independent enterprise point of view. Surface disagreement and resolve it through evidence, transparent assumptions, and clear decision logic rather than superficial consensus.
• Advise senior leadership. Develop concise, decision-ready materials for the Executive Team and Board. Facilitate executive discussions, communicate with judgment and credibility, challenge senior leaders constructively, and help leadership converge on decisions.
• Develop strategy talent and institutional capability. Lead and coach multi-level project teams, including Directors, Associate Directors, and other contributors. Raise the quality of problem solving, analysis, synthesis, executive communication, and project leadership, and establish reusable approaches for enterprise-level strategy questions.
• Support decision follow-through. Translate strategic decisions into clear implications, owners, milestones, and measures of value. Help identify when assumptions have changed or leadership intervention is required, while keeping implementation accountability with business, functional, and transformation leaders.

Role Interfaces and Boundaries:

• Corporate Strategy determines and clarifies enterprise direction and leads major enterprise strategic questions; this role is accountable for the integrity of the strategic recommendation, not for enterprise execution.
• Domain Strategy translates enterprise direction into coherent strategies for strategically critical domains, while Product teams develop and execute the initiatives needed to deliver those strategies.
• Portfolio Strategy provides the analysis and governance that help the ELT make investment and prioritization trade-offs; this role contributes enterprise context without owning the portfolio operating cadence.
• Corporate Development leads transaction evaluation and execution. The Senior Director partners with Corporate Development when inorganic options are relevant to an enterprise strategy question.
• Transformation, business functions, and operating leaders own implementation and enterprise execution. The role may support the strategic-planning process but is not primarily a planning-calendar, governance, or internal PMO role.

Decision-Making and Impact

The Senior Director determines how ambiguous enterprise questions should be framed, which hypotheses and alternatives require examination, what evidence is decision-relevant, and how recommendations should be presented to senior leadership. The role advises on choices with significant implications for long-term growth, investment, risk, capability requirements, organizational focus, and opportunity cost. It has substantial influence over enterprise priorities and resource-allocation decisions, but does not hold unilateral P&L, capital-allocation, transaction, product-roadmap, or implementation authority unless separately delegated. Success is measured by the quality and independence of the enterprise point of view, the clarity and durability of leadership decisions, and the strength of the strategy talent and methods the role develops.

Key Competencies:

• Enterprise strategy judgment: Connects industry change, customer needs, scientific and technology developments, competitive dynamics, economics, and internal capabilities to enterprise-level choices.
• Structured problem solving under ambiguity: Finds the decision within an unclear concern, develops testable hypotheses and novel frameworks, and identifies questions not initially asked.
• Analytical and financial rigor: Builds and interrogates market, business-case, scenario, and value-creation analyses; distinguishes facts, assumptions, and organizational beliefs.
• Executive synthesis and communication: Turns complex analysis into a compelling decision narrative, facilitates senior discussions, and communicates effectively with the ELT and Board.
• Constructive challenge and influence: Builds trust while challenging established assumptions, surfaces real disagreement, and influences across a matrix without relying on formal authority.
• Scientific and technology fluency: Learns complex science- and technology-driven markets rapidly and translates technical developments into commercial and strategic implications without needing to be a practicing scientist.
• Talent and team leadership: Creates high standards, coaches experienced strategists, develops future strategy leaders, and builds inclusive, high-performing teams.
• Judgment and working style: Demonstrates intellectual curiosity, pragmatism, sound judgment, resilience, and low-ego collaboration in high-stakes settings.

Supervisory Responsibilities

This is a people-leader role. The Senior Director manages and develops senior strategy professionals and leads multi-level, cross-functional project teams. Responsibilities include setting direction and quality standards, allocating work, providing timely feedback and coaching, supporting career development, and building a strong bench of strategy leaders.

Minimum Qualifications:

All minimum qualifications are job-related and consistent with business necessity.

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in business, economics, finance, engineering, life sciences, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience: Required candidates have a prior background in a top consulting firm. Typically requires 16-20 years of direct relevant strategy experience:
  • Directly relevant strategy experience: 10+ years in corporate strategy, top-tier strategy consulting, or equivalent senior strategic roles addressing enterprise, market, growth, portfolio, business-model, or capability decisions.
  • C-suite advisory experience: Within that experience, 5+ years directly advising C-suite executives or equivalent enterprise decision-makers, including framing strategic decisions, developing recommendations, facilitating executive discussions, and presenting decision-ready materials. Candidates must have personally led this work and demonstrated a strong executive presence, serving as the primary presenter and facilitator in discussions with Executive Leadership Teams (ELT). This experience must include independently delivering presentations, defending analyses and recommendations, responding to executive challenge and scrutiny, and influencing enterprise-level decisions. End-to-end strategy leadership: 5+ years independently leading complex, high-ambiguity, cross-functional strategy engagements from problem definition and analysis through recommendation and executive decision.
  • Strategy team development: 3+ years leading and coaching multi-person, multi-level strategy teams, with demonstrated impact on the quality and growth of other strategists.
• Analytical capability: Advanced structured problem-solving, quantitative analysis, financial modeling, scenario development, synthesis, and executive communication skills.
• Enterprise influence: Demonstrated ability to form an independent point of view, challenge established assumptions constructively and influence senior stakeholders across a complex global matrix without relying on formal authority.
• Commercial and technology judgment: Strong commercial and financial judgment and the ability to understand complex scientific and technology-driven markets and translate them into enterprise implications.

Preferred Credentials:

• Advanced degree: MBA, master’s degree, or other relevant advanced degree.
• Sector experience: Experience in genomics, life sciences, diagnostics, healthcare, or another technology-intensive industry.
• Governance exposure: Experience preparing for or participating in Board-level strategy discussions in a public-company or similarly complex environment.
• Perspective breadth: A combination of external advisory and in-house corporate strategy experience, or equivalent breadth across enterprise and business-level questions.
• Inorganic strategy: Experience evaluating partnerships, acquisitions, or other inorganic options as part of a broader strategy, without requiring transaction-execution specialization.

Other Requirements:

• Travel: Ability to travel domestically and internationally up to 20%, based on business needs.
• Executive cadence: Flexibility to support time-sensitive ELT or Board decision cycles across global time zones.

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The estimated base salary range for the Senior Director, Corporate Strategy (San Diego / Hybrid) role based in the United States of America is: $224,900 - $337,300. Should the level or location of the role change during the hiring process, the applicable base pay range may be updated accordingly. The range reflects long‑term growth in the role; therefore, most candidates are hired between the minimum and middle of the range. Placement depends on experience, skills, location, and internal equity. Additionally, all employees are eligible for one of our variable cash programs (bonus or commission) and eligible roles may receive equity as part of the compensation package. We offer a wide range of benefits as innovative as our work, including access to genomics sequencing, family planning, health/dental/vision, retirement benefits, and paid time off.

We are a company deeply rooted in belonging, promoting an inclusive environment where employees feel valued and empowered to contribute to our mission. Built on a strong foundation, Illumina has always prioritized openness, collaboration, and seeking alternative perspectives to propel innovation in genomics. We are proud to confirm a zero-net gap in pay, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or race. We also have several Employee Resource Groups (ERG) that deliver career development experiences, increase cultural awareness, and offer opportunities to engage in social responsibility. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer committed to providing employment opportunity regardless of sex, race, creed, color, gender, religion, marital status, domestic partner status, age, national origin or ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, sexual orientation, pregnancy, military or veteran status, citizenship status, and genetic information. Illumina conducts background checks on applicants for whom a conditional offer of employment has been made. Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable local, state, and federal laws. Background check results may potentially result in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment. The background check process and any decisions made as a result shall be made in accordance with all applicable local, state, and federal laws. Illumina prohibits the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the application and interview process. If you require accommodation to complete the application or interview process, please contact [email protected]. To learn more, visit: https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/posters/pdf/eeopost.pdf. The position will be posted until a final candidate is selected or the requisition has a sufficient number of qualified applicants.