Associate Director, Corporate Strategy (San Diego / Hybrid)

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Position Title: Associate 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: Director, Corporate Strategy

FLSA Status: Exempt

Position Summary:

The Associate Director, Corporate Strategy is an experienced enterprise strategist who leads major analytical workstreams and selected, bounded strategy engagements that inform Illumina’s long-term direction and priority decisions. Working with a Director or Senior Director, the Associate Director translates an agreed strategic question into hypotheses, analyses, alternatives, and a clear synthesis; builds a trusted fact base; and turns complex findings into recommendations for senior leaders.

The role operates across R&D, Product, Commercial, Finance, Corporate Development, Medical, Operations, and regional leadership in a global, science- and technology-driven environment. The Associate Director is an individual contributor who is expected to exercise substantial judgment over methods and analysis, identify when the initial framing is incomplete, and lead cross-functional contributors to an integrated answer without relying on formal reporting authority. The role contributes to executive decisions but does not ordinarily serve as the sole owner of Illumina’s most ambiguous cross-enterprise questions or the final enterprise recommendation.

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 major strategy workstreams and bounded engagements. Own analytically complex workstreams within cross-enterprise projects and independently lead selected strategy engagements with a defined sponsor, decision, and scope. Deliver work from hypothesis and analysis through synthesis, recommendation, and decision support.
• •Structure the problem and analytical approach. Translate an agreed strategic question into testable hypotheses, decision criteria, required analyses, data needs, and a practical workplan. Identify missing questions or weak assumptions and recommend changes to the Director or Senior Director when the evidence warrants reframing.
• •Build and validate the fact base. Integrate market models, customer insights, competitive intelligence, scientific and technology perspectives, internal performance, and financial analysis. Distinguish evidence from opinion, document assumptions, and ensure that analyses can withstand senior review.
• •Develop alternatives and implications. Build credible options, quantify implications for growth, investment, risk, capabilities, and opportunity cost where possible, and synthesize the evidence into a recommendation within the agreed project mandate.
• •Integrate functional expertise. Work with functional, domain, product, and regional partners to gather relevant expertise, reconcile inconsistent inputs, surface unresolved disagreements, and maintain an enterprise lens in the analysis.
• •Develop executive-ready communication. Create concise presentations and pre-reads that make the decision, evidence, alternatives, and trade-offs clear. Present findings to senior leaders and contribute to ELT materials and discussions under the direction of the Director or Senior Director.
• •Lead project contributors and raise analytical quality. Direct analysts, managers, external advisors, and cross-functional contributors on assigned strategy work; manage the workplan; review outputs; provide project-based coaching in structured problem solving and synthesis; and escalate risks that threaten the quality or timing of the answer.
• •Support decision handoff and learning. Document approved choices, implications, assumptions, owners, milestones, and measures of value. Support a disciplined handoff to accountable business or functional leaders and flag changed assumptions without taking ownership of day-to-day implementation.

Role Interfaces and Boundaries:

• •Corporate Strategy determines and clarifies enterprise direction and leads major enterprise strategic questions; this role is accountable for the quality of its assigned strategic work, 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 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 Associate Director partners with Corporate Development when inorganic options are relevant to a broader strategy question.
• •Transformation, business functions, and operating leaders own implementation and enterprise execution. The role may contribute to strategic planning but is not primarily a planning-calendar, governance, or internal PMO role.

Decision-Making and Impact

The Associate Director determines methods, analyses, and day-to-day workstream choices within an agreed strategic question and sponsor mandate. The role is accountable for the integrity of the fact base, the quality of the synthesis, and the reliability of recommendations within assigned work. It influences senior leadership decisions through evidence and clear trade-offs, while material reframing of an enterprise mandate and final accountability for the most consequential enterprise recommendation remain with the Director, Senior Director, or Vice President. The role has no unilateral P&L, capital-allocation, transaction, product-roadmap, or implementation authority.

Key Competencies:

• •Structured problem solving: Breaks complex questions into testable hypotheses, identifies the highest-value analyses, and recognizes when the initial framing is incomplete.
• •Analytical and financial rigor: Builds and validates market, business-case, scenario, and value analyses and clearly separates facts, assumptions, and uncertainties.
• •Strategic synthesis: Connects findings across workstreams, develops meaningful alternatives, and converts detailed analysis into a clear recommendation.
• •Executive communication: Produces concise, decision-ready materials and presents findings credibly to senior stakeholders.
• •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.
• •Project-team leadership: Directs contributors on assigned strategy work, manages interdependencies and quality, provides practical project-based coaching, and escalates issues with sound judgment.
• •AI-enabled strategy development: Applies AI directly to accelerate research, analysis, synthesis, scenario development, and executiv