Technical Associate Director Data Architecture

Technical Associate Director Data Architecture

Job ID REQ-10045696

Apr 23, 2025

Summary

The Scientific Data & Products (SDP) group in Research Informatics (RX) is dedicated to maximizing impact and value for BR through software and data. We deliver powerful, functional, and integrated software solutions that ensure a seamless user experience. Our goal is to build and apply excellence in product and data management to advance Novartis' drug discovery efforts.

About the Role

As a Data Architect, you will design efficient, elegant, and high-performance data architectures and data flows for our scientific data products. You will collaborate closely with teams in product management, data engineering, business analysis, user experience, data science, and information security to realize our product vision. Your work will create a secure, compliant, performant, and sustainable data landscape crucial for democratizing access to BR’s data.

Major Responsibilities

• Design enterprise-quality data architectures supporting our products
• Regularly update designs based on feedback from agile product teams
• Consider impacts on BR- and Novartis-wide data ecosystems
• Drive solutions ensuring smooth data flow and connectivity across scientific domains
• Promote adoption of RX and industry best practices among product teams
• Design, implement, and maintain security and infrastructure requirements for development, testing, and production environments
• Collaborate with Architecture and Operations teams to integrate new solutions efficiently
• Lead architectural improvements and standardization efforts
• Develop automated processes for deployment and create reusable automation frameworks
• Maintain controls for configuration items and authorized changes within the enterprise IT environment
• Create detailed solution and service designs to meet quality, performance, and timeline requirements; or install applications per approved designs, ensuring infrastructure deployment and operational management

Major Accountabilities

The ideal candidate will have extensive expertise in data architecture and experience with scientific data types used in drug discovery, including biology, chemistry, and clinical data. Skills in process change management and aligning non-IT scientists with strategic data initiatives are essential.

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Expertise in data architecture, engineering, or software engineering
• Strong knowledge in at least two of BR’s core data areas (molecular biology, chemistry/chemical biology, clinical)
• Experience supporting standard IT products in these areas and understanding data flows
• Proven ability to architect solutions for laboratory data workflows on a global scale
• Skills in balancing corporate and departmental priorities worldwide
• An understanding of a global company's digital needs
• A drive for ensuring data consistency
• Strong consensus-building and stakeholder management skills
• Ability to operate effectively at the research and R&D interface
• Experience in initiating organizational improvements
• Capability to improve processes across scientific domains
• Experience with agile development, linked data, RDF, cloud technologies (AWS, Google, Azure), and graph databases (a plus)
• Minimum of 10 years in data architecture, engineering, or software engineering
• At least 5 years supporting scientific software or working in drug discovery or related fields

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: Novartis aims to foster an inclusive environment reflecting the communities we serve.

How can we achieve this? With our people. Join us and be part of this mission! More info: https://www.novartis.com/about/strategy/people-and-culture

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