Life-science instruments & laboratory services · 2021–2024
Telesis Bio & Eton Bioscience
Director of Engineering Innovation · 2021–2022; Senior Director of Oligo Synthesis · 2022–2023; General Manager, Eton Bioscience · 2023–2024
Leading engineering, production, and Eton’s business
Enlarge imageEnlarge: GenE production instrument with fluid-handling hardware, synthesis stations and reagent bottles.Across three years at Telesis Bio, I took on three very different leadership problems: building an engineering team from scratch to automate a new DNA-synthesis chemistry, scaling an internal manufacturing operation so the company could make its own DNA building blocks reliably, and stepping in as General Manager of Telesis Bio’s Eton Bioscience subsidiary to grow specialty sales and guide the business through its sale.
Each assignment required a different kind of execution—de-risking hardware while the underlying science was still moving, uniting engineers and chemists on a daily production floor, and running a multi-branch service business under tight budget constraints through an ownership transfer.
Developing the SOLA Oligo Printer
I recruited and led an eight-person innovation team working alongside colleagues developing the synthesis chemistry and an external engineering firm to turn a developing SOLA DNA-synthesis process into an automated benchtop machine. By testing competing liquid-handling ideas on inexpensive breadboards before committing to a full architecture, the engineering team delivered three working beta instruments on time and under budget.
Running DNA production on GenE
GenE was a separate chemical-synthesis platform used to supply oligos—the short, custom DNA strands Telesis needed in-house to assemble full genes. I brought engineers, chemists, and operators together into a 10-person production team responsible for the equipment, chemical process, and linked database records.
Under that combined structure, the production team scaled output to 6 million DNA bases per quarter, achieving above 99.8% first-pass yield and above 95% manufacturing uptime while using machine-learning analysis across sequence and run records to drive quality improvements.
Managing Eton’s services, sales, and ownership change
In October 2023, I became General Manager of Eton Bioscience, an existing Telesis subsidiary providing DNA sequencing, sample preparation, and oligo services across four branches. Working with teammates handling the laboratory methods and a newly hired sales manager, I reorganized account ownership in HubSpot and launched higher-value services built on equipment we already owned—with the team growing specialty-oligo sales by 50% and advancing whole-plasmid sequencing into customer trials.
Even with tight limits on staffing and capital, revenue stabilized as I built branch-level financial models, organized buyer diligence materials, and kept our laboratories serving customers seamlessly through the divestiture’s close on August 26, 2024.
Experience used here
Engineering leadership · Instrument development · DNA production · LIMS & quality systems · Service development · Sales management · Financial forecasting · General management