More than one million people in the United States today are fighting blood cancer. While a traditional allogeneic stem cell transplant has been the best hope for many, the transplant itself can prove fatal or lead to serious conditions, such as graft vs. host disease. Orca Bio is a commercial-stage biotechnology company redefining the transplant process by developing next-generation cell therapies with the goal of providing significantly better survival rates with dramatically fewer risks. With our purified, high-precision cell therapies we hope to not only replace patients' blood and immune systems with healthy ones, but also restore their lives.
We have built a state-of-the-art, 100,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Sacramento, CA (7910 Metro Air Pkwy) to ensure the consistent and reliable delivery of our high-precision cell therapy products. This site is essential to advancing our clinical pipeline and supporting future commercial availability of our life-saving therapies.
The Material Planner ensures material availability for clinical and commercial cell therapy manufacturing by translating production plans and patient demand into material requirements. This role partners cross-functionally to maintain material readiness, mitigate supply risks, and support on-time manufacturing and patient delivery. The role also provides backup support for production planning and scheduling as needed.
Physical Demands & Work Conditions
Production Associates: Must have visual acuity of 20/20 (corrected or uncorrected) and normal color vision to safely perform critical tasks such as visual inspection of materials, equipment, and labeling, including distinguishing color-coded components in a GMP environment.
Must meet cleanroom gowning requirements, including wearing full gowning (face coverings, gloves, hoods, goggles) for up to 3 consecutive hours at a time, minimal movement in the cleanroom, and working with or around human blood, blood-derived materials, cells, other biological materials, and alcohol-based sprays. Use of cosmetics (makeup, painted nails), jewelry, or facial piercings is not permitted in the cleanroom, and any skin conditions that cause shedding must be disclosed.
Must be comfortable regularly participating in video-based meetings.
Essential Duties & Key Responsibilities:
- Develop and maintain material requirements based on production plans, patient demand, forecasts, bills of materials, lead times, and inventory levels.
- Monitor inventory levels, shelf life, expiration risks, and replenishment parameters to ensure availability of critical manufacturing and QC materials.
- Coordinate with Procurement, Warehouse, Quality, QC, and suppliers to ensure materials are ordered, received, released, and available when needed.
- Identify and proactively communicate material shortages, supply constraints, and other risks that could impact manufacturing schedules or patient delivery.
- Review upcoming production schedules, issued orders for material kits and confirm material readiness for manufacturing campaigns and patient-specific production requirements.
- Partner with Production Planning, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain to resolve material needs, constraints, support schedule changes, and coordinate production recovery activities.
- Provide backup coverage for the Production Planner/Scheduler, including production scheduling, slot management, schedule changes, and communication of manufacturing plans.
- Maintain material planning parameters, reports, dashboards, and key performance indicators to improve inventory visibility, planning accuracy, and supply reliability.
- Support the development and continuous improvement of material planning processes, procedures, and work instructions as the organization scales.
- Perform planning activities in accordance with applicable GMP requirements, company procedures, and quality systems.
- Performs other duties as assigned.
Education & Experience Requirements:
A.S. degree required, Bachelor's degree preferred in Supply Chain, Operations, Industrial Engineering, Business, Life Sciences, or a related field.
3+ years of experience in material planning, supply planning, production planning, inventory management, or a related function within pharmaceutical, biotechnology, cell therapy, medical device, or another regulated manufacturing environment.
Experience using ERP/MRP systems for material planning and inventory management.
Strong analytical, organizational, and problem-solving skills.
Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced manufacturing environment.
Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
High attention to detail and demonstrated ability to identify and resolve supply constraints proactively.
Ability to work effectively in a GMP environment and follow controlled processes
Personal Qualities & Physical Demands:
Ability to multitask and handle multiple responsibilities simultaneously; able to prioritize
Demonstrates strong work ethic, curiosity to learn and contribute in a fast-paced collaborative environment
Strong interpersonal skills and ability to communicate effectively
Strong problem-solving and critical thinking skills to support making decisions affecting due dates, quality and cost
Ability to work in a collaborative manner, independently and as part of a team
Ability to work in a fast-paced start-up environment while following SOPs
Highly tolerant and respectful of all team members
A sense of humor is always appreciated
Strong problem-solving skills with desire to improve upon established processes
Ability to work for long periods of time at a computer
Occasional need to ascend/descend stairs within the workspace; job requires sitting, standing/walking
