Manager Lab Operations - Healthcare Reprocessing

The name Sotera Health was inspired by Soteria, the Greek goddess of safety, and reflects the Company’s unwavering commitment to its mission, Safeguarding Global Health®.
Sotera Health Company is a leading global provider of mission-critical sterilization and lab testing and advisory services for the healthcare industry. With a combined tenure across our businesses of nearly 200 years and our industry recognized scientific and technological expertise, we help to ensure the safety of millions of patients and healthcare practitioners around the world every year.
Across our 64 facilities worldwide, we have over 3,000 employees who are dedicated to safety and quality. We are a trusted partner to more than 5,800 customers in over 50 countries, including more than 40 of the top 50 medical device companies and 9 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies.
Job Summary:
The Laboratory Operations Manager is responsible for leading, developing, and motivating a high-performing team while ensuring operational excellence, employee engagement, and business performance. This role serves as a frontline people leader who establishes clear expectations, drives accountability, provides ongoing coaching and feedback, and develops employees to meet both current and future business needs.
The Laboratory Operations Manager partners closely with the Senior Laboratory Operations Manager to execute departmental strategy, optimize operational effectiveness, improve key performance indicators, and ensure alignment with company values, quality standards, and regulatory requirements. The role is accountable for workforce planning, continuous improvement initiatives, operational execution, and fostering a culture of safety, collaboration, accountability, and customer focus.
Essential Duties:
Talent Management:
Lead the recruitment, onboarding, development, engagement, and retention of employees
Conduct regular one-on-one meetings with direct reports focused on development, performance, career growth, and engagement
Establish clear expectations, goals, and performance standards for employees
Provide timely coaching, recognition, and constructive feedback to support employee success
Hold employees accountable to department objectives, company values, policies, and behavioral expectations
Partner with Senior Manager and/or Human Resources to effectively address performance concerns, employee relations matters, and development opportunities
Develop individual development plans and growth strategies for employees
Create a culture of accountability, collaboration, professionalism, learning, and continuous improvement
Lead succession planning efforts to ensure business continuity and future leadership readiness
Identify and implement strategies that improve employee engagement and retention
Department Level Operations and Strategic Oversight:
Lead day-to-day operational execution to ensure safe, efficient, and effective laboratory performance
Manage staffing plans, workload balancing, and resource allocation to meet customer commitments and operational objectives
Monitor workflow and capacity to proactively address constraints and changing business demands
Utilize operational metrics and key performance indicators to evaluate performance, identify trends, and implement improvements
Drive achievement of service, quality, productivity, turnaround time, and utilization goals
Partner with other departments to ensure a seamless customer experience and effective cross-functional collaboration
Learn, champion, and leverage laboratory operating systems (LOMS) and other business systems to improve visibility, performance, and decision making
Support implementation of new technologies, systems, and operational processes.
Continuous Improvement & Business Performance
Lead problem-solving efforts related to people, process, quality, and customer concerns.
Support implementation of strategic initiatives designed to improve efficiency, quality, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement.
Ensure training programs maintain employee competency and business continuity.
Support inventory and supply-chain planning activities.
Promote visibility of performance results through effective metric communication and team engagement.
Regulatory Compliance & Quality:
Ensure compliance with applicable regulatory requirements, quality systems, and customer commitments
Promote adherence to company policies, procedures, and safety requirements
Participate in quality investigations, corrective actions, and continuous quality improvement initiatives
Support implementation of company safety programs and initiatives.
Professionalism:
Attend work regularly and reliably
Adhere to all policies and procedures
Perform other duties as assigned
Competencies of this position:
Strong people management capability
Desire to develop others
Ability to manage priorities and organize time
Good communication skills - written and verbal
Ability to manage conflict and have difficult conversations
Problem solving - employee issues, laboratory processes, customer challenges
Must be able to work cross functionally and break down silos to ensure we deliver an excellent customer experience.
Be a change advocate
Persuasion and negotiation skills with staff
Proficiency with Microsoft Office products, especially with Excel and Outlook
Work Environment:
This job operates in a professional office and lab environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, keyboards, computer mouse, phones, photocopiers, projectors and file cabinets. This role occasionally enters into the lab to perform work.
Physical requirements:
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met to perform the essential job functions. Must be able to move/traverse 10% of the day and remain in a stationary sitting/standing position at a desk while using a computer, keyboard, computer mouse and phone 90% of the day. This position does not require heavy lifting greater than 50lbs.
Education and experience requirements:
Bachelors degree with a potential for people management; Introduction to leadership training required. Laboratory science education, experience, or certifications preferred. Business/Management training preferred.
Sotera Health goes to market through its three best-in-class businesses – Sterigenics®, Nordion® and Nelson Labs®. Sterigenics is a leading global provider of outsourced terminal sterilization and irradiation services for the medical device, pharmaceutical, food safety and advanced applications markets. Nordion is the leading global provider of Co-60 and gamma irradiators, which are key components to the gamma sterilization process. Nelson Labs is a global leader in outsourced microbiological and analytical chemistry testing and advisory services for the medical device and pharmaceutical industries.