Head of Enterprise Applications

Job description

We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era. When a breakthrough is delayed, the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients, or a crop from lab to field, involves thousands of slow, manual, disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this, compressing decades of R&D work into years. But that only happens when clean, structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done. Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments, capture structured data, and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200,000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work, from academic labs to Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma. We’re building an AI scientist for our customers. We can’t do that if we haven’t built the muscle ourselves. AI fluency is the foundation we build on; it's core to how we work, and we're committed to helping every new hire integrate it into their day-to-day. As part of our interview process, you'll complete a brief AI-focused exercise or discussion so we can understand how you think about and use AI to drive impact in your role. Feel free to reference any tools, platforms, or workflows you use today. ## **ROLE OVERVIEW** Biotechnology is rewriting life as we know it, from the medicines we take, to the crops we grow, the materials we wear, and the household goods that we rely on every day. But moving at the new speed of science requires better technology. Benchling's mission is to unlock the power of biotechnology. The world's most innovative biotech companies use Benchling's R&D Cloud to power the development of breakthrough products and accelerate time to milestone and market. Come help us bring modern software to modern science. Enterprise Applications is one of five functions in Benchling's CIO and CISO group. You will own the business application portfolio and the integrations between every platform Benchling runs on: Salesforce (including CPQ/RevCloud), NetSuite, Workday, Certinia, Gainsight, Zendesk, Atlassian, Slack, Workato, and the rest of the SaaS estate. That includes ownership of the full lifecycle of those platforms, from architecture and selection through configuration, integration, vendor management, and process design. Enterprise Apps sets the target-state portfolio and the integration standards the rest of the company builds against. We're hiring a leader to take that mandate and make it one of the strongest business technology functions in software. ## **Why this role, and why now** The foundation is built. The integration practice is live and shipping. A recent identity re-architecture cut Salesforce access tickets by roughly 65% in three months. The business helps rank a prioritized roadmap, and that roadmap is full of work that moves revenue. Three things are converging that make this the right moment to step in: - **Benchling is scaling.** You'll own a portfolio spanning Salesforce/CPQ, NetSuite, Workday, Certinia, Gainsight, Zendesk, Atlassian, Slack, Workato, and the rest of the SaaS estate that Benchling runs on. - **The revenue and finance architecture is being rebuilt for the next stage of the company.** Quote-to-cash, pricing and packaging, and consumption billing are all in motion, alongside the systems controls that public-company financial reporting requires. These are the programs that determine how fast Benchling can sell, bill, and close. - **AI is redefining what a business systems team can be.** Gartner projects that 40% of enterprise applications will include task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from less than 5% a year earlier. Benchling is already applying AI, wall-to-wall, to repeatable operational work across the company. Enterprise Applications is where that shift should be most visible, both in the platforms we run, how the team runs itself, and how we work with internal stakeholders to re-envision historic processes as systems of work where AI increasingly takes the central role in operating more and more functions. Most teams like this scale by adding people. This one won't. The opportunity here is to design a function whose output grows faster than its headcount, where automation and AI absorb the operational load, and where the business solves more of its own problems by design. That's a rare thing to build, and Benchling is committed to funding it. ## **RESPONSIBILITIES** - **Own the portfolio and the architecture.** Set the target-state SaaS portfolio, the integration standards, and the data-flow patterns for the company. Govern platform selection, rationalization, and lifecycle decisions. Decide what we buy, build, consolidate, and retire, and back each call with cost and risk data. - **Land the programs that move revenue.** You'll take the reins on a set of high-visibility programs across quote-to-cash, pricing and packaging, and consumption billing. Assess them quickly, shape them to the outcome the business needs, and give clear, early guidance on what will land and when. - **Multiply team output through automation.** Take the delivery work this team does today, including configuration, change management, testing, release, access review, and ticket triage, and systematically remove the manual parts. Set targets, instrument the work, and report the results. Success is measured in throughput and quality per person. - **Put AI to work where it earns its place.** Build practical AI into how the team works and into the platforms we run, in partnership with our AI and Data Engineering (AIDE) team. Be clear-eyed about where a model genuinely helps and where it doesn't. We care more about what you shipped and what it saved than which tools you used. - **Expand self-service across the company.** Push requests upstream to the teams that own the process. Build the documentation, guardrails, request patterns, and in-product help that let Finance, GTM, People, Legal, and CX teams solve their own problems safely, then measure the deflection. - **Build audit-ready systems ahead of the requirement.** Design and operate IT general controls across the platforms that carry financial data, covering access provisioning and reviews, segregation of duties, change management, and evidence capture. Controls should be a byproduct of how the team already works, not an annual scramble. You'll partner with Finance, Internal Audit, and Trust and Compliance on control design and external audit readiness. - **Grow the team and the bench.** You'll inherit a strong core: a manager running the run-the-business function, an integration architect, Salesforce delivery capacity, and a flexible contractor bench. Get the full-time and contractor mix right, develop the people already here, and hire deliberately against capability gaps. - **Partner across the company.** Work directly with Finance, RevOps, Sales, CX, People, and Legal leaders on the roadmap and on the process changes behind each system change. Prioritize openly, and explain the reasoning when the answer is no. This role reports to the CIO/CISO as part of the Engineering organization, and is a peer to the leaders of Technology Operations and Support, Security Engineering, Security Operations, and Trust and Compliance. ## **QUALIFICATIONS** - You've built and led business applications functions before, and you're looking for a bigger canvas. Specifically: - 10+ years in enterprise or business applications. - 5+ years leading teams in a fast-paced startup environment. You've managed managers and owned a budget. - You've owned a multi-platform SaaS portfolio at scale, spanning at least CRM, ERP, and HRIS, plus the integration layer between them. - Deep Salesforce experience, including quote-to-cash and CPQ/RevCloud in a company with real pricing and packaging complexity. - Hands-on familiarity with an integration platform such as Workato, MuleSoft, Boomi, or Tray, and a point of view on how to run an integration practice rather than a queue of one-off connections. - A track record of measurable automation outcomes. You can name the metric, the baseline, and where it stands now. - Practical experience applying AI to enterprise application work, with the judgment to tell a real value-add capability from a demo. - You've built internal self-service that reduced request volume, and you can explain how you got the business to adopt it. - You've scaled systems controls through a company's move to public-company financial reporting. That means designing and operating SOX IT general controls across core financial systems, running access reviews and change management to an auditable standard, automating evidence collection, and working directly with internal and external auditors. - You've taken over programs mid-flight and stabilized them, including telling a senior sponsor that a committed date needs to move. - Strong vendor management: contract negotiation, renewal strategy, and portfolio rationalization with documented savings. - Clear written communication with non-technical audiences. You can explain a systems tradeoff to a savvy CFO and a process tradeoff to a sales team in the same week. - Curiosity about life science. Prior industry knowledge isn't required. ## **Nice to have** - NetSuite, Certinia, or Workday ownership. - Experience with Snowflake, Salesforce Data Cloud, or an analytics platform as part of the application data layer. - Experience managing a distributed contractor or partner bench alongside full-time staff. Research consistently shows that strong candidates, especially from underrepresented groups, skip roles when they don't match every line. If most of this describes you, we'd like to hear from you. ## HOW WE WORK We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement that prioritizes in-office collaboration. Employees are expected to be on-site 3 days per week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday). ## #LI-Hybrid #BI-Hybrid #LI-CG1 **Benchling welcomes everyone.** We believe diversity enriches our team so we hire people with a wide range of identities, backgrounds, and experiences. We are an equal opportunity employer. That means we don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.