Senior Director, Corporate Strategy (San Diego / Hybrid)

What if the work you did every day could impact the lives of people you know? Or all of humanity? At Illumina, we are expanding access to genomic technology to realize health equity for billions of people around the world. Our efforts enable life-changing discoveries that are transforming human health through the early detection and diagnosis of diseases and new treatment options for patients. Working at Illumina means being part of something bigger than yourself. Every person, in every role, has the opportunity to make a difference. Surrounded by extraordinary people, inspiring leaders, and world changing projects, you will do more and become more than you ever thought possible. Position Title: Senior 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: Vice President, Enterprise Strategy FLSA Status: Exempt Position Summary : The Senior Director, Corporate Strategy is a senior member of the Enterprise Strategy team who leads some of Illumina’s most consequential enterprise strategy efforts and serves as a trusted strategic advisor to senior executives. The role helps define Illumina’s long-term direction and strategic priorities, converts ambiguous leadership questions into clearly framed decisions, builds the fact base needed to evaluate alternatives, and develops recommendations that make major choices and trade-offs explicit. Operating in a global, matrixed, science- and technology-driven environment, the Senior Director independently leads high-stakes work involving the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) and, when appropriate, the Board. The role integrates market, customer, scientific, technology, competitive, operational, and financial perspectives; maintains an independent enterprise point of view; and leads through influence across R&D, Product, Commercial, Finance, Corporate Development, Medical, Operations, and regional leadership. Business and functional leaders own execution; Corporate Strategy supports decision clarity, alignment, and follow-through without owning enterprise transformation or day-to-day implementation. 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 enterprise strategy development. Help define and evolve Illumina’s long-term direction and enterprise strategic priorities. Translate market, customer, scientific, technology, competitive, and financial developments into implications for Illumina, and connect enterprise aspirations to a coherent set of strategic choices. Frame ambiguous executive decisions. Convert broad or unclear leadership concerns into defined decisions, meaningful alternatives, decision criteria, and focused analytical workplans. Identify the questions that matter most rather than accepting a predetermined scope. Lead high-priority strategic initiatives. Independently lead cross-enterprise strategy efforts sponsored by the CEO, Executive Team, or Vice President, Enterprise Strategy—from initial framing through recommendation and executive decision. Topics may include growth strategy, business-model evolution, new-market entry, technology disruption, competitive response, enterprise capability choices, or other major strategic questions. Build a trusted enterprise fact base. Integrate market models, customer insight, competitive intelligence, scientific and technology perspectives, internal performance, and financial analysis. Pressure-test assumptions, distinguish evidence from organizational opinion, and partner with specialist teams while remaining accountable for the overall strategic conclusion. Develop alternatives and make trade-offs explicit. Create credible strategic options rather than presenting a single predetermined answer. Quantify growth, investment, risk, organizational requirements, and opportunity cost where possible, and recommend what Illumina should start, stop, accelerate, deprioritize, or sequence differently. Integrate enterprise perspectives. Draw on relevant functional and regional expertise while preserving an independent enterprise point of view. Surface disagreement and resolve it through evidence, transparent assumptions, and clear decision logic rather than superficial consensus. Advise senior leadership. Develop concise, decision-ready materials for the Executive Team and Board. Facilitate executive discussions, communicate with judgment and credibility, challenge senior leaders constructively, and help leadership converge on decisions. Develop strategy talent and institutional capability. Lead and coach multi-level project teams, including Directors, Associate Directors, and other contributors. Raise the quality of problem solving, analysis, synthesis, executive communication, and project leadership, and establish reusable approaches for enterprise-level strategy questions. Support decision follow-through. Translate strategic decisions into clear implications, owners, milestones, and measures of value. Help identify when assumptions have changed or leadership intervention is required, while keeping implementation accountability with business, functional, and transformation leaders. Role Interfaces and Boundaries: Corporate Strategy determines and clarifies enterprise direction and leads major enterprise strategic questions; this role is accountable for the integrity of the strategic recommendation, 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 the 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 Senior Director partners with Corporate Development when inorganic options are relevant to an enterprise strategy question. Transformation, business functions, and operating leaders own implementation and enterprise execution. The role may support the strategic-planning process but is not primarily a planning-calendar, governance, or internal PMO role. Decision-Making and Impact The Senior Director determines how ambiguous enterprise questions should be framed, which hypotheses and alternatives require examination, what evidence is decision-relevant, and how recommendations should be presented to senior leadership. The role advises on choices with significant implications for long-term growth, investment, risk, capability requirements, organizational focus, and opportunity cost. It has substantial influence over enterprise priorities and resource-allocation decisions, but does not hold unilateral P&L, capital-allocation, transaction, product-roadmap, or implementation authority unless separately delegated. Success is measured by the quality and independence of the enterprise point of view, the clari