Manager, Laboratory and Technical Services (Preclinical Sciences)

James Cook University is recruiting a Manager, Laboratory and Technical Services (Preclinical Sciences), and the deadline is close: applications must be submitted by November 4, 2026. The appointment is full-time and continuing at 36.25 hours per week, classified HEWL 8, with a base salary of $111,960 to $128,567 plus up to 17% employer superannuation.

The successful candidate must be based in Townsville or willing to relocate before commencement, at the Bebegu Yumba campus in Douglas. Bebegu Yumba means Place of Learning in the Birri-Gubba language, and the campus sits inside the Townsville Tropical Intelligence and Health Precinct, 13 kilometres from the CBD on a 386-hectare bushland site.

A leadership job, not a laboratory bench job

The job title contains laboratory and technical services, but the work is not primarily pipetting, tissue culture or assay design. The role reports into the Education Division's Laboratory and Technical Services unit and leads the planning, prioritisation and delivery of services across multiple campuses and disciplines. The portfolio names Biomedicine, Microbiology, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Pharmacy, Medical Laboratory Science and other Health Sciences.

Day to day, the manager is accountable for safe, compliant operations; for workload and performance across technical teams; for optimising specialist laboratories and analytical instrumentation; and for giving high-level advice on feasibility, safety, compliance and resource implications. The job is about systems and people more than about a single piece of equipment.

The preclinical portfolio in plain terms

Preclinical sciences in this context means the laboratory disciplines that underpin health professional training before students enter clinical settings, though at JCU the portfolio extends well beyond that. The position description lists physical containment facilities, scheduled medicines and poisons, chemical safety, biosafety and dangerous goods as part of the compliance stack. Physical containment class 2 (PC2) laboratories are built for work with microorganisms that pose a moderate risk to people and the environment; they require certified containment, strict waste handling and documented training.

JCU's research infrastructure shows something of the scale. The Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine operates approved-arrangement quarantine facilities, tissue culture suites, biological resource facilities and a PC3 high-containment laboratory in Townsville, as its Townsville facilities page details. JCU describes that PC3 facility as the only one of its rating between Brisbane and Singapore. The Townsville cryostore and biobank can hold up to 80,000 biological samples in liquid nitrogen and ultra-low temperature freezers. None of this belongs to the teaching-service portfolio alone, but it is the environment the new manager will work alongside.

Townsville's teaching infrastructure is newer than many applicants expect

The Science Place opened in 2018 and consolidated chemistry, biochemistry and biology that had been scattered around campus into one building with two 150-seat super labs. It was Australia's first education building to earn LEED Gold, and it was designed so flexible research labs connect visually and physically to lab support areas. Pharmacy has its own history: JCU began teaching pharmacy in Townsville in 1999 in response to a regional workforce shortage, and the university now runs an accelerated three-year Bachelor of Pharmacy (Honours) with up to 904 hours of clinical placement.

Townsville's health sciences ambition predates this vacancy. In 2020, the city council and the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine argued that Townsville could become the largest regional health sciences hub in Australia, anchored by the university and Townsville Hospital and Health Service, alongside the TropiQ health and knowledge precinct.

The caution here is the difference between buildings and budgets. A named discipline in a selection criterion is a commitment; a continuing HEWL 8 appointment with a defined salary band is a budget. Applicants who can speak plainly about that tension — about how they have triaged instrument downtime, cross-trained staff, or renegotiated chemical stores across competing demands — will be the ones the panel recognises.

What the selection criteria are really asking

The advertisement lists five selection criteria in addition to the key requirements in the role profile. They are specific, so the application should be too. The criteria ask for:

• Management experience in complex biomedicine, microbiology, molecular or medical laboratory science environments, with evidence of operational service delivery across disciplines.
• Leadership of diverse technical teams, including how you strengthened capability, collaboration and safety culture.
• Oversight of physical containment facilities, specialised equipment and analytical instrumentation supporting teaching and service outcomes.
• Applied knowledge of work health and safety, biosafety, chemical safety, dangerous goods, scheduled medicines and poisons, and Australian laboratory standards.
• Evidence of planning and coordinating staff, budgets, equipment and facility space across multiple disciplines and locations.

Scheduled Medicines and Poisons refers to Queensland's classification and control of substances such as prescription medicines and scheduled poisons used in pharmacy teaching and research. Applicants should prepare a concrete example for each criterion — a situation, an action and a measurable result — rather than restating the criterion itself.

Who should apply, and who should think twice

This role suits someone who has already held a laboratory coordinator or senior technical officer position, ideally as a technical services manager in a university teaching laboratory or a pathology and pharmaceutical environment. The panel is not asking for a research track record; it is asking for service delivery under regulation. If your proudest moments involve finding out why a class was delayed and fixing the root cause, with the fix documented so it does not recur, the criteria are describing you.

What gives some candidates trouble is the breadth. A single-discipline lab manager can feel the jump to biomedicine, microbiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, pharmacy, medical laboratory science and other health sciences all at once. The realistic preparation is to audit one formal compliance system you have run — a chemical register, a biosafety training matrix, a scheduled substances log or an incident register — and be ready to talk about how it operated across more than one user group. That evidence travels further than a general claim about strong leadership.

Pay, leave and the structure behind the advertisement

HEWL 8 sits toward the upper end of the professional staff classification scale. At JCU the band runs $111,960 to $128,567, with superannuation of up to 17% through UniSuper — well above the superannuation guarantee — and a 36.25-hour week. The package also includes five weeks of annual recreation leave plus leave loading, 15 days of paid sick or carer's leave per year, up to six months paid parental leave, and staff study assistance.

There is also Fitness Passport, a corporate health insurance discount, a free Employee Assistance Program, and on-site childcare and medical services at the Townsville campus. The advertisement frames these benefits as part of a commitment to work-life balance, which matters in a role that can otherwise blur into the teaching timetable.

How to apply, precisely

Applications close on November 4, 2026. The recruitment process asks for four documents or steps through the JCU careers page: complete the application form, upload a current resume, upload a cover letter addressing the key requirements for success, and upload a separate document responding to the selection criteria.

• Complete the online application form on the JCU careers portal.
• Upload your current resume.
• Upload a cover letter tied to the key requirements for success in the role profile.
• Upload a separate selection criteria response document.

For enquiries about the role, contact Dr Amanda Norton at amanda.norton1@jcu.edu.au. The JCU careers listing is the authoritative source for the position description, and the AcademicJobs listing carries the advertisement for reference. If you are polishing the CV itself, the guidance in How to Write a Winning Academic CV applies even to professional posts: evidence of outcomes beats a list of past titles.

What success in year one could look like

The first credible measures for whoever takes this post are not complex or remote. They are: no unmanaged safety incident across physical containment and scheduled substances; a documented schedule of preventative maintenance for the highest-use instruments; a transparent cross-training plan that lets a technician from one discipline work safely in another; and a service delivery record that shows practical classes started on time and within specification. Those numbers will not appear in a strategy document unless someone reports them on purpose.

The institution has already put the harder assets in place. The next person's job is to make them run as one portfolio rather than a set of named silos. That, more than the title, is what the selection panel will be trying to hear.