Associate Director, Service Engineering at Natera
- In Austin, TX.
Overview The Associate Director of Service Engineering leads the reliability, availability, and operational excellence of Natera’s lab-facing platforms. This role ensures that clinical systems, laboratory equipment workflows, and data pipelines operate with high reliability, scalability, and compliance in a regulated healthcare environment. You will lead a team responsible for production stability, incident response, and service health, partnering closely with Production Engineering, Lab Operations, Bioinformatics, Infrastructure, Facilities, and Compliance to support mission-critical genetic testing and diagnostics. Key Responsibilities Leadership & Team Development Lead, mentor, and scale a team of Service Engineers / SREs supporting clinical production systems Establish clear expectations around ownership, on-call readiness, and operational excellence Drive hiring, onboarding, performance management, and career growth Foster a blameless, learning-oriented culture focused on patient impact and reliability Service Reliability & Production Operations Own reliability and availability for production services supporting laboratory operations, reporting, and customer delivery Define and manage SLAs, SLOs, and operational KPIs aligned with clinical and business priorities Lead major incident response, ensuring rapid triage, clear communication, and thorough post-incident reviews Oversee on-call rotations, escalation paths, and operational playbooks Ensure operational readiness and go-live support for new assays, pipelines, and platform capabilities Technical Strategy & Execution Partner with Engineering and Development teams to design resilient, fault-tolerant systems Drive best practices for monitoring, alerting, logging, and observability across lab and cloud platforms Reduce operational toil through automation, tooling, and process improvements Advocate for reliability, performance, and scalability requirements early in the development lifecycle Cross-Functional Collaboration Act as a primary operational partner to Lab Operations, Bioinformatics, Engineering, and Development. Translate clinical, regulatory, and operational needs into technical reliability requirements Provide clear, executive-level updates on service health, incidents, and risk mitigation plans Compliance, Security & Risk Management Ensure systems meet healthcare and regulatory requirements (e.g., HIPAA, CLIA, CAP, SOX) Partner with Quality and Compliance on audits, access controls, change management, and incident response Own disaster recovery, business continuity planning, and periodic testing for critical systems Ensure production changes follow validated and compliant release processes Required Qualifications 8+ years of experience in service engineering, engineering roles 5+ years of people management experience leading technical teams Strong experience operating highly available, mission-critical production systems Proven expertise in incident management and root cause analysis Hands-on experience with CMMS and LIMs environments Strong written and verbal communication skills, especially in high-stakes situations Preferred Qualifications Experience in healthcare, biotech, or other regulated environments Familiarity with laboratory information systems (LIMS), data pipelines, or bioinformatics workflows Experience with infrastructure and automation tools Experience defining SLOs/SLAs for systems with clinical or patient impact What Success Looks Like Reliable, predictable operation of lab-facing systems Reduced incident frequency and faster recovery times Strong partnership with Lab Ops, Engineering, and Compliance A high-performing Service Engineering team that proactively improves system reliability Clear visibility into operational risk and service health across Natera platforms OUR OPPORTUNITY Natera™ is a global leader in cell-free DNA (cfDNA) testing, dedicated to oncology, women’s health, and organ health. …