Director, Research Data Foundation

Johnson Johnson; Beerse; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Johnson & Johnson in Beerse, Belgium is seeking a Director, Research Data Systems to lead the data platforms and governance across R&D, driving a major transformation to a FAIR, AI-ready data environment.

This role requires collaboration with scientists, lab informatics, and technology teams to align data strategy with translational science and analytics objectives.

Responsibilities

• Lead scalable data ingestion and curation platforms, including onboarding, metadata enrichment, pipelines, and orchestration.
• Enable naming conventions, identifiers, provenance, lineage, ontologies, quality thresholds, stewardship, sharing, and compliant reuse.
• Partner with data product teams and scientists to ensure scientific context and data quality.
• Define and operate research data quality and FAIR frameworks, standards, thresholds, and reporting.
• Collaborate with data owners and product teams to set quality rules and metadata expectations.
• Establish automated monitoring and governance across diverse research data.
• Lead catalog, metadata, ontology, lineage, and master data capabilities to improve findability and interoperability.
• Establish adoption of canonical research entities, identifiers, vocabularies, semantic standards, metadata, lineage, and provenance.
• Enable high-quality, semantically consistent research data across platforms.

Job description

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at jnj.com .

As guided by Our Credo, Johnson & Johnson is responsible to our employees who work with us throughout the world. We provide an inclusive work environment where each person is considered as an individual. At Johnson & Johnson, we respect the diversity and dignity of our employees and recognize their merit.

Job Function: Data Analytics & Computational Sciences

Job Sub Function: Data Engineering

Job Category: People Leader

All Job Posting Locations: Beerse, Antwerp, Belgium

Job Description

We are searching for the best talent for a Director, Research Data Systems to be located in Spring House, PA; Raritan, NJ; Titusville, NJ or Beerse, Belgium.

Please note that this role is available across multiple countries and may be posted under different requisition numbers to comply with local requirements. While you are welcome to apply to any or all of the postings, we recommend focusing on the specific country(s) that align with your preferred location(s):

United States - R-102254

Remember, whether you apply to one or all of these requisition numbers, your applications will be considered as a single submission.

The Director, Research Data Systems, Innovative Medicines R&D is responsible for leading the research data technology capabilities that enable trusted, governed and reusable data across the Research organization. The role will drive a major transformation to bring research data from fragmented systems, instruments, labs, and (in silico) scientific workflows into a FAIR environment that accelerates discovery, translational science, analytics, AI/GenAI, and scientific decision‑making.

This role partners across research functions, lab informatics teams, data product owners, scientists, data science / modeling teams, governance leaders, architecture, cybersecurity, and technology platform teams to run a research data operating model. The role translates research strategy, FAIR principles, scientific data needs and AI-readiness requirements into using scalable platforms, metadata practices, data services, standards, scorecards, and operating routines.

The role is accountable for research data platforms, research data ingestion, FAIR metadata and cataloging, scientific data quality and scorecards, research master/reference data, semantic interoperability, data virtualization, and research data products across Discovery, laboratory sciences, translational research, computational biology, chemistry, biologics, imaging, omics, screening, and other research domains.

Key Responsibilities

• Research Data Ingestion and Curation Services
  • Lead scalable data ingestion and curation platforms, covering onboarding, metadata enrichment, pipeline engineering, orchestration, monitoring, and issue resolution.
  • Enable tools to standardise naming conventions, identifiers, provenance, lineage, ontologies, vocabularies, quality thresholds, stewardship, sharing, and compliant scientific reuse.
  • Partner with data product teams and scientists to ensure scientific context and data quality.
  • Enable governed and performant access to distributed R&D data through scalable integration and data virtualization, including federation, semantic access, security, caching, and performance optimization.
• Research Data Quality, Governance and FAIR Standards
  • Define and operate research data quality and FAIR frameworks, standards, thresholds, and executive reporting across priority research data domains.
  • Partner with data owners, stewards, DDSAI, product teams, and business functions to establish quality rules, ownership, metadata expectations and FAIR acceptance criteria.
  • Establish consistent, automated monitoring and governance across diverse research data, covering quality and completeness.
  • Translate quality and FAIR insights into remediation priorities and measurable improvement roadmaps, improving data readiness for analytics, AI/GenAI, computational modeling, knowledge graphs, translational science, and scientific reuse.
• Research Data Semantics, Metadata and Master Data
  • Lead research data catalog, metadata, ontology, lineage, and master/reference data capabilities to improve the findability, context, interoperability, governance, and reuse of research data.
  • Establish consistent adoption of canonical research entities, identifiers, controlled vocabularies, semantic standards, metadata, lineage, and provenance across research platforms, workflows, pipelines, and data products.
  • Enable high-quality, semantically consistent research data a