Sr. Director, Translational Medicine Lead, Autoimmune

Moderna is seeking an exceptional scientific leader to serve as Senior Director, Translational Medicine Lead – Autoimmune. This individual will lead translational strategy for high-priority and scientifically complex autoimmune programs while helping shape cross-program and modality-level translational strategy across Moderna’s emerging Immune Therapeutics portfolio. The successful candidate will combine deep expertise in human autoimmune immunology and translational drug development with broad understanding of immune tolerance, pathogenic T- and B-cell biology, immune-cell depletion and reprogramming, clinical biomarkers, quantitative pharmacology, and mechanism-based development. This role will operate as a senior scientific leader across program and portfolio teams, strengthen translational capabilities, mentor scientific leaders, establish cross-asset approaches, and influence senior governance and external scientific strategy. Here's What You’ll Do Lead clinical-facing translational strategy for multiple programs and/or the most scientifically complex and business-critical autoimmune assets, integrating disease biology, therapeutic mechanism, patient heterogeneity, pharmacology, biomarker evidence, safety, and clinical outcomes into coherent development strategies. Define the evidence required to establish confidence in mechanism, biological activity, therapeutic window, differentiation, and probability of technical success; anticipate major translational uncertainties and establish focused evidence-generation strategies to resolve them. Shape autoimmune portfolio and modality strategy by establishing common scientific frameworks for immune tolerance, immune reset, durability, relapse, and non-response, and by informing prioritization of programs and indications based on human biology, translatability, biomarker feasibility, and competitive differentiation. Provide senior leadership in human translational immunology, establishing state-of-the-art approaches to evaluate pathogenic and regulatory T-cell biology, B-cell states, autoantibodies, innate immunity, antigen-specific responses, and immune networks in patients. Advance cross-program biomarker and translational technology strategy, including standards for clinical immune monitoring and fit-for-purpose use of high-dimensional flow cytometry, antigen-specific functional assays, immune repertoire analysis, transcriptomics, proteomics, serology, HLA/genetic analysis, and tissue-based approaches. Partner with Clinical and Quantitative Pharmacology to establish integrated PK/PD and exposure-response frameworks connecting dose to target engagement, immune-cell effects, disease biology, safety, and clinical outcomes, including induction, maintenance, retreatment, or boosting strategies where relevant. Shape translational safety strategy by anticipating risks from novel immune biology and integrating mechanistic monitoring into development plans; provide senior scientific leadership in interpreting relationships between efficacy-driving pharmacology and safety. Serve as a senior translational voice in program and portfolio governance, presenting and defending recommendations concerning mechanism, patient population, dose, proof-of-concept, indication expansion, Go/No-Go criteria, and translational probability of success. Lead cross-program reverse translation by identifying patterns across clinical programs, building feedback loops between human data and Research, and ensuring clinical observations influence target selection, modality design, next-generation programs, and portfolio-level understanding of mRNA/LNP behavior in autoimmune applications. Build scientific capability and talent by mentoring Directors, Associate Directors, and scientists; establishing best practices; identifying capability gaps; and leading selected cross-functional initiatives that improve scientific quality, consistency, and speed across Translational Medicine. Lead external