Senior Research Data Architect for AI-Driven Drug Discovery

zealandpharma; Søborg; On-site; DKK 1,100,000 - 1,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Zealand Pharma seeks a Principal Research Data Architect to lead the data foundation for AI-driven drug discovery. You will design and own the research data model, govern data quality, and drive end-to-end data ecosystem maturity across legacy and cloud platforms.

You will collaborate with research, IT, and AI/ML teams, shaping architecture and delivering scalable data solutions for analytics, machine learning, and agentic workflows.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience designing research or scientific data architectures, ideally in drug discovery or life sciences
• Hands-on experience with a scientific data platform (Benchling or comparable LIMS/ELN) and with requirements engineering (URS/FRS)
• Strong grounding in semantic technologies - ontologies, controlled vocabularies, knowledge graphs and F.A.I.R. / ontology-based data management
• Experience with cloud lakehouse platforms (Databricks or equivalent) and data pipelines feeding analytics and AI/ML
• Demonstrated ownership of data governance - metadata, lineage, and reference/master data
• Proven ability to lead a team, set architecture direction, and drive delivery across vendors and cross-functional stakeholders; familiarity with peptide or biologics data is an advantage

Responsibilities

• Own the research data model - capturing scientific requirements as URS/FRS, directing configuration of new workflows with architecting new platforms working with implementation partners, and extending the model to new assay types
• Co-lead the migration of legacy assay data into the future foundation, jointly accountable with our data management and IT leads
• Build the semantic layer for Zealand Pharma - adapting public ontologies and legacy controlled vocabularies into a governed vocabulary served across research, taking an adopt-and-extend approach rather than reinventing standards
• Own research data governance - data quality, lineage, metadata and reference data - as the trustworthy foundation for every downstream use
• Architect the research data lake and tactical knowledge graphs, delivering a "Zealand research context" as a substrate for analytics and AI
• Partner with our AI/ML, computational chemistry and agentic-workflow leads as their data source supplier, and ensure governed data flows cleanly into analysis and visualization layers

Skills

Research data architecture

Leadership

Semantic technologies

Cloud data platforms

Data governance

Stakeholder management

Tools

Benchling

LIMS/ELN

Databricks

Job description

Zealand Pharma seeks a Principal Research Data Architect to lead the data foundation for AI-driven drug discovery. You will design and own the research data model, govern data quality, and drive end-to-end data ecosystem maturity across legacy and cloud platforms.

You will collaborate with research, IT, and AI/ML teams, shaping architecture and delivering scalable data solutions for analytics, machine learning, and agentic workflows.