Moderna looks to the West Coast for latest expansion

Moderna’s physical presence in the US has mainly been confined to the East Coast. But now it will be planting its flag on the West Coast.

Brad Miller

The mRNA biotech announced Friday that it will be opening two new offices in South San Francisco and Seattle this year. Moderna chief information officer Brad Miller told Endpoints News the Seattle office is slated to open April 4.

The Seattle location will be housing Moderna’s efforts in technology and implementation of AI and cloud tools across its platform. Miller said that Seattle is home to a rich market of tech talent, which makes it an attractive choice for an office. Moderna will look to hire around 100 employees but has room to bring that number up to around 220.

“It’s notorious for having very entrepreneurial, very tech-deep. All the skills that we need at Moderna to scale out our capabilities to continue to serve our customers with medicines,” Miller said.

Moderna Genomics will be expanding to the South San Francisco location. However, not many details have emerged about the headcount or the opening at that location. Miller stated that having a presence in the Bay Area will also get the company closer to more tech talent as well.

Moderna’s westward expansion comes as it’s looking to boost its headcount by 2,000. Miller said that employee growth is charted across the board, but a lot of the new employees will be specific to manufacturing, in an attempt to produce vaccines and therapeutics at “a greater output.”

“We need to enable the manufacturing (and) enable the commercialization of these therapeutics and vaccines, and so we’re going to be focused on making sure that we unlock the potential of the company,” he said.

The boost in headcount comes at a time when many in the biotech scene are trimming pipelines and staff, but Miller states that Moderna is in an expansion period, as it experienced a “fast amount of growth” during the Covid-19 pandemic. Miller noted that the company has an opportunity to scale its systems and feels that it is a ripe time to scale up.

Moderna will be expanding across the Atlantic as well, opening a new research and manufacturing site in Oxfordshire in the UK.

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