Senior Process Engineer I

We’re here to cure cancer. Every moment is dedicated to developing treatments and every action moves us one step closer to that goal. Kite’s personalized CAR T-cell therapies have changed the paradigm, and the company continues to advance cancer therapies.

Join Kite and help shape where the business and medical science goes next.

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

Job Description

Job Summary

MSAT Technical Strategy serves as a strategic hub within MSAT, supporting early phase project strategy development, cross-pillar resource planning, project portfolio oversight, capacity and capability tracking, and operational excellence. The team plays a key role in connecting technical strategy to site-level execution and in enabling informed decision making in a complex and fast-changing environment.

We are looking for a Senior Process Engineer I who thrives in complexity and change, brings strong structure to ambiguous situations, and enjoys working across multiple initiatives, stakeholders, and timelines simultaneously, while handling a wide variety of deliverables. This role is ideal for someone who can maintain oversight without losing detail, thinks several steps ahead, and uses influence and scenario thinking to guide decisions rather than formal authority alone.

Role Overview

In this role, the Senior Process Engineer I owns and facilitates the MSAT project portfolio and associated dashboards, ensuring they provide clear, accurate, and actionable insight into the work MSAT is delivering and the demands on its resources. As a co-owner of MSAT resource management, the role represents MSAT in the site portfolio management forum and supports leadership in making informed trade-offs across projects, priorities, and capabilities.

The role combines strategic thinking, structured project and portfolio management, and strong communication. Success requires comfort with ever evolving priorities, changing requirements, and decisions to pause, accelerate or stop initiatives, while maintaining clarity, momentum, and stakeholder alignment.

In addition, the Senior Process Engineer I independently manages small to medium complexity projects and contributes as a subject matter expert to larger, cross-functional programs, particularly during early strategic phases.

Your Responsibilities

Strategic and Portfolio Contributions

• Contribute to site strategic project planning by assessing technical feasibility, complexity, and sequencing across multiple parallel initiatives affecting MSAT.
• Translate MSAT technical strategy into site-level execution through portfolio shaping, roadmap development, and stakeholder alignment.
• Support early phase project strategy development using data-driven insights, scenario building, feasibility assessments, and risk-based thinking.
• Maintain oversight across a broad project landscape, anticipating downstream impacts, dependencies, and resource implications.

Project Execution and Program Support

• Plan and execute small to medium complexity projects end-to-end, including scope definition, timelines, stakeholder alignment, and delivery, with clear accountability for outcomes.
• Act as a senior technical contributor in tech transfer programs and other cross-site initiatives, supporting strategic readiness and operational readiness planning.
• Apply structured project management practices to enable clear governance, transparent communication, and timely escalation of risks and issues.
• Serve as a subject matter expert during audits and inspections, providing clear technical narratives and evidence-based rationale.
• Own quality records and support new and existing portfolio of products.

Leadership, Communication, and Facilitation

• Communicate effectively with diverse audiences, including engineers, MSAT leadership, site leadership, and cross-functional partners, adapting messaging to context and decision level.
• Facilitate workshops, offsites, and strategy sessions for MSAT leadership.
• Mentor and coach engineers, supporting development, delivery, and continuity within the organization.
• Contribute to operational excellence through supporting the problem-solving platform and continuous improvement initiatives.

Project and Portfolio Management

• Own and facilitate the MSAT project portfolio framework, including dashboards and reporting used in leadership and portfolio governance forums.
• Continuously improve portfolio tracking tools by incorporating user feedback and simplifying governance, usability, and clarity.
• Drive correct and consistent use of portfolio tools by coaching contributors and reinforcing agreed ways of working.

Resource Management

• Represent MSAT in site portfolio management forums, clearly articulating MSAT priorities, constraints, and capabilities.
• Review and coordinate MSAT resource requests, balancing feasibility, prioritization, and available capacity.
• Proactively identify resource constraints, competing priorities, and sequencing risks across projects and pillars.

Your Profile

• Bachelor’s degree with 6 or more years of relevant experience, or Master’s degree with 4 or more years of relevant experience.
• Strong ability to bring structure to complex, ambiguous environments and manage multiple initiatives in parallel.
• Proven capability to anticipate issues, build scenarios, and think ahead across interdependent workstreams.
• Comfortable operating in a dynamic environment where priorities, timelines, or scope may change or where initiatives may be paused, accelerated or cancelled.
• Excellent organizational skills, strong follow-through, and a high level of personal accountability.
• Ability to influence outcomes through clear communication, credibility, and collaboration rather than formal authority.
• Experience working effectively across functions and incorporating diverse perspectives into decision making.
• Self-directed, resilient, and motivated by solving complex problems in a fast-paced setting.

Kite is a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development of innovative cancer immunotherapies, 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.