Mantle AI, Inc. Client Principal Remote · Contractor Company website

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We formed Mantle to support the life sciences and biotech industry exclusively. True to that mission, nearly 90% of our business sits in these verticals, and that focus shapes how we work with every client. Mantle was founded on a simple observation: biotech companies are increasingly running lean, capital efficient, and milestone-driven operating models, but the technology services available to them have not evolved at the same pace. The name Mantle reflects the role we aim to play. Like the mantle beneath the Earth’s crust, the technology, cybersecurity, AI, advisory, and IT support functions beneath a biotech must be stable, resilient, and built to support everything above them. These functions may not always be the most visible parts of the company, but when they are weak, fragmented, or reactive, the business feels it quickly. Our vision emerged from years of direct operating and advisory experience across the biotech lifecycle. We have seen the same pattern repeatedly: growing biotechs need practical, domain experienced partners who know the business context behind the technology. Furthermore, we have learned the best partner is not always the largest provider or the lowest-cost provider. It is the one that can hit on the aforementioned points as well as remain nimble and pragmatic. Too often, the rigid MSP model falls short of that standard. Many providers can deploy tools, manage tickets, and support commodity systems. Far fewer can connect those activities to the realities of a growing biotech like trust, business partnership, and the need to make pragmatic decisions with limited internal bandwidth. The result is often a familiar cycle in which the same providers bring the same playbooks to the same internal IT problems. The output may look acceptable on paper, but the business still experiences fragmented ownership, limited strategic direction, reactive support, and a lack of true partnership. Mantle was built to close that gap because we believe biotech companies need technology partners with direct biotech experience.

Contract-to-Hire role

Mantle takes a deliberate approach to developing its advisory leaders. Rather than placing someone immediately into independent ownership of a client relationship and expecting them to adopt our model on the fly, Client Principals work alongside Mantle’s Fractional CIOs, learning how we assess organizations, develop recommendations, navigate executive dynamics, and lead highly bespoke technology functions.

The Client Principal within our Retained Advisory practice will initially augment and work alongside Mantle’s Fractional CIOs, contributing meaningfully to client strategy, executive discussions, roadmap ownership, budgeting, decision support, and coordination of Mantle’s broader delivery resources. The expectation, however, is not for the individual to remain in a supporting role.

The role is designed as a progression toward independent ownership of Fractional CIO and Head of IT engagements.

As judgment, experience, and client relationships develop, Client Principals will progressively move from supporting and co-leading engagements to independently serving as the senior technology leader for a portfolio of biotechnology companies, with Mantle leadership continuing to provide executive air cover, specialist support, and escalation when useful.

This structure is intentional. Our advisory model depends as much on judgment, context, relationships, and business understanding as it does on technical expertise. We want future Mantle Fractional CIOs to develop within that model before taking independent ownership of client relationships.

The specific leadership role Mantle fulfills varies by client. Depending on an organization’s stage, needs, and existing leadership structure, we may serve as its Fractional CIO, Fractional Head of IT, or senior technology advisor. These client-facing roles describe the capacity in which we serve the organization rather than internal seniority within Mantle.

The right person will be comfortable operating without a rigid playbook.

We are intentionally not looking for someone who believes every company of a certain size needs the same tools, controls, architecture, or IT operating model. We expect our principals to understand the business first, assess risks and tradeoffs, and then develop recommendations appropriate to that particular organization.

A substantial part of the role is relationship-driven. You must be able to read an organization, understand stakeholder dynamics, recognize what is and is not being said, adjust your communication style, and build credibility with executives who may have very different perspectives on technology.

What You'll Do

• Serve as the senior technology advisor to support our Fractional CIOs.
• Support the development of technology strategies, roadmaps, investment priorities, budgets, and operating models aligned with each company's business objectives and stage of development.
• Support the assessment of technology and cybersecurity decisions through a pragmatic, risk-informed lens rather than relying on prescriptive technology stacks or maturity models.
• Understand organizational dynamics, stakeholder priorities, competing interests, and change tolerance and incorporate them into recommendations.
• Translate complex technical, security, regulatory, and operational issues into clear management decisions and tradeoffs.
• Help clients determine not only what they should do, but what they should intentionally defer or avoid.
• Guide decisions involving enterprise applications, identity, endpoint management, cybersecurity, cloud platforms, scientific and laboratory technology, vendors, managed services, data, AI, and related technology functions.
• Partner with Mantle's cybersecurity, engineering, managed services, and specialist resources rather than personally executing every technical activity.
• Maintain clear client priorities and a living technology roadmap.
• Lead recurring client strategy and management discussions and participate in executive and board-level conversations when appropriate.
• Identify emerging business needs and opportunities where Mantle can provide additional value without turning the advisory relationship into a sales exercise.
• Escalate significant strategic, political, commercial, or technical issues to Mantle leadership when another perspective would strengthen the outcome.

What We're Looking For

• Prior experience in an IT leadership role within biotechnology or life sciences, such as IT Manager, Senior IT Manager, Associate Director or comparable role, with meaningful responsibility for technology strategy, stakeholder management, vendors, budgets, security, or IT operations.
• Meaningful experience within biotechnology, pharmaceutical, life sciences, or a closely related regulated industry.
• Experience working in smaller, growing, or evolving organizations where technology strategy cannot simply be inherited from a large-enterprise playbook.
• Broad understanding of enterprise IT, cybersecurity, cloud services, identity, endpoints, SaaS platforms, vendor management, technology operations, and budgeting.
• Familiarity with the technology and compliance considerations relevant to biotechnology, which may include GxP, clinical development, data privacy, SOX/IPO readiness, cybersecurity, scientific systems, or regulated business processes.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively with executives and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Strong commercial and organizational judgment.
• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguous situations and develop a point of view without being given a predetermined answer.
• High emotional intelligence and the ability to adapt communication and recommendations to different personalities and organizational cultures.
• Comfortable challenging both clients and colleagues respectfully when the evidence supports a different approach.
• Work primarily remotely with clients in the EST to PST timezones

What Will Make Someone Exceptional in This Role

Technical expertise alone will not make someone successful here.

We are particularly interested in candidates who can demonstrate situations where they:

• Changed a technology recommendation after better understanding the organization or stakeholder dynamics.
• Deliberately chose not to implement a technically desirable control or platform because the business case or risk did not justify it.
• Influenced an executive team without relying primarily on technical authority.
• Navigated disagreement among senior stakeholders.
• Built enough trust with management to become involved in decisions beyond the narrow boundaries of IT.
• Balanced cybersecurity, compliance, user experience, cost, scientific productivity, and business velocity rather than optimizing for only one of them.
• Worked for or with a biotech company as it progressed from pre-clinical stage, to product launch and perhaps IPO. 

Contract-to-Hire Structure

The initial contract period is intended to allow both Mantle and the candidate to determine whether there is a strong long-term fit.

During the initial period, you will work alongside Mantle leadership, participate in existing client relationships, learn our approach, and progressively take ownership of client interactions.

We expect the progression to move from observation and preparation, to co-leading relationships, to independently owning a portfolio of client engagements with senior Mantle leadership providing executive air cover and escalation support.

Successful conversion into a full-time role would be based not simply on technical performance, but on your ability to earn client trust, exercise sound judgment, operate independently, and represent Mantle effectively with senior management teams.

How We Evaluate Candidates

Our interview process will focus heavily on real situations rather than theoretical technology questions.

Candidates should be prepared to discuss ambiguous client and organizational scenarios, explain how they reached decisions, identify competing considerations, and demonstrate how they communicate recommendations differently depending on the audience.

We are less interested in whether you know the "right stack" than in understanding how you think.