Director, Recombinant Antibodies & Services

Vector Laboratories is seeking a talented and highly motivated individual to join our growing team. As an organization known for its culture of service, reliable products and unmatched technical expertise, our employees are passionate about the impact and quality of their work. The opportunities we provide to work collaboratively and build trusting relationships in a team-oriented environment make Vector Laboratories an ideal place to learn, flourish and contribute to scientific advancement.

We genuinely value diverse perspectives and ideas and strive to demonstrate how this approach results in success. With 50 years of history, Vector Laboratories boasts an unparalleled reputation in protein labeling, detection, and conjugation. Our recent mergers and acquisitions have significantly expanded our portfolio, serving the biopharma industry, academia, life science tools, and diagnostics, providing comprehensive solutions to the life science industry.

Our recombinant antibody platform combines a catalogue of recombinant antibodies with custom antibody engineering, expression, and manufacturing services for research and preclinical customers worldwide. We are looking to take Vector Laboratories to new heights and hope you’ll consider joining our globally impactful team!

The Director, Recombinant Antibodies & Services is a dual-mandate senior scientific leader who owns two interconnected platform businesses at Vector Laboratories: the Antibody-Drug Conjugate (ADC) capability build at the Wilton, UK site, and the recombinant antibody and custom protein engineering services platform. Internally, the role sets the technical direction for both platforms — owning the ADC conjugation chemistry, analytics, and cytotoxic payload facility build, and driving the forward capability roadmap that keeps the recombinant antibody platform competitive in a crowded custom services market.

At the bench, it is the protein engineer who converts client molecule requirements into a complete production design package for the Operations team to deliver. Externally, the role is the commercial subject matter expert and Vector Laboratories’ senior scientific voice — the scientist customers and prospects speak to when a project is technically complex — converting deep protein engineering expertise into won business and successfully delivered projects.

Bridging these, the role contributes to strategic direction, partnering with the CSO, Product Marketing, and Corporate Development to identify where capability gaps sit and whether they are best closed by building internally, partnering, licensing, or acquiring. This is a hands‑on, senior role for a scientist equally comfortable leading a platform build, on a technical sales call, at the design bench, in a troubleshooting session with manufacturing, and in front of a conference audience.

The role leads a small R&D team (2–5 scientists).

This position reports to the Chief Scientific Officer.

Deep, personally owned expertise in conjugation chemistry, linker design, and ADC CMC; able to build and scale a platform from the ground up including facility setup, SOP development, and QC release specifications.

Demonstrated expertise in antibody engineering, including formats, isotypes and species variants, Fc engineering, tagging strategies, and multi‑specific architectures; hands‑on mammalian (CHO/HEK) expression expertise; able to design complex biologics to a defined client requirement, advise customers, and troubleshoot across the full expression and manufacturing workflow.

Proven ability to build and scale technical platforms from the ground up; translates R&D priorities into capability…