Director, Data Engineering - RWD

Parexel; United Kingdom; Hybrid; GBP 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Parexel is seeking a Director, Data Engineering - RWD to lead domain-aligned engineering across ingestion, transformation, and distribution of Real-World Data in a life sciences context. You will coordinate with Clinical Operations, Commercial, governance, analytics, and platform teams to translate needs into executable plans and measurable outcomes.

The role emphasizes matrixed leadership, cloud data platform expertise, and a strong focus on governance, quality, and reusability of data assets

Qualifications

• Deep technical expertise in enterprise data engineering and data delivery.
• Experience leading data engineering initiatives in life sciences or RWD environments.
• Ability to translate business needs into technology priorities and delivery plans.

Responsibilities

• Act as domain-aligned engineering coordination lead for Real-World Data in life sciences.
• Drive delivery across Data Ingestion, Data Engineering, and Data Distribution teams.
• Provide technical leadership for scalable RWD pipelines and lakehouse design.

Skills

Technical leadership

Matrixed leadership

Life sciences data

Stakeholder engagement

Cloud data platforms

Product/program management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Information Systems

Tools

Azure Databricks

Azure Data Lake

SQL

Python

Spark

APIs, CI/CD

Job description

Parexel is in the business of improving the world’s health. We do this by providing a suite of biopharmaceutical services that help clients across the globe transform scientific discoveries into new treatments. We believe in our values, Patients First, Quality, Respect, Empowerment & Accountability.

This role will work within our innovative Data & Technology group that continues to evolve to meet business needs, fuel Parexel's growth and enable improved support for stakeholders, including customers and ultimately patients, who will benefit from Parexel's integrated processes and systems.

This role can be based in the UK, Poland or Romania and can be fully home based and remote working anywhere in any of these locations only.

As the Director, Data Engineering -RWD is a domain-aligned technical execution leader with predominant experience in life sciences, clinical research, and Real-World Data, responsible for orchestrating and driving delivery across Data Ingestion, Data Engineering, and Data Distribution for RWD and related enterprise data products.

This is a strong individual contributor role with no direct line management authority, however it requires strong matrixed leadership, technical credibility, and influence across data engineering, Clinical Operations, Commercial, and broader business stakeholders to ensure that life sciences data priorities are translated into executable plans and delivered with consistency, transparency, regulatory awareness, and measurable impact.

You will partner with Data and Technology, the Data and Analytics CoE, Clinical Operations, Commercial, business domain stakeholders, platform teams, governance partners, and delivery teams to translate life sciences and Real-World Data needs into executable engineering priorities.

You will lead intake management, roadmap shaping, prioritization, dependency management, stakeholder alignment, delivery governance, and value tracking, while establishing clear ownership, managing dependencies, coordinating delivery sequencing, and ensuring trusted, high-quality, governed, and reusable data assets are available for analytics, AI enablement, operational reporting, regulatory-aligned use cases, and sponsor-facing distribution.

What You'll Lead:

RWD Data Domain Engineering & Orchestration

• Act as the domain-aligned engineering coordination / orchestration lead for Real-World Data in a life sciences context, connecting clinical research, operational, and commercial priorities to executable plans across ingestion, transformation, curation, and distribution.
• Drive delivery across Data Ingestion, Data Engineering, and Data Distribution teams, ensuring clear scope, sequencing, dependency management, and execution follow-through.
• Provide technical leadership for scalable RWD pipelines, lakehouse design, architecture, data quality controls, metadata practices, and reusable data product patterns.

Matrixed Execution Leadership & Cross-Functional Orchestration

• Serve as the primary matrixed coordination point between RWD stakeholders, Clinical Operations, Commercial, life sciences business domain owners, architects, engineers, governance teams, analytics teams, and downstream consumers.
• Lead intake, prioritization, roadmap shaping, delivery planning, and operating cadence for RWD data initiatives, balancing urgency, capacity, quality, risk, compliance, and business value.
• Influence execution across teams without direct authority by building shared understanding, clarifying tradeoffs, resolving blockers, and driving commitment to agreed outcomes.

Technical Leadership, Team Enablement & Delivery Discipline

• Coordinate across data engineering teams and stakeholders to align expectations for technical quality, execution discipline, stakeholder engagement, and delivery accountability.

• Champion capability development in cloud data engineering, Azure Databricks, lakehouse architecture, CI/CD, SQL, Python, data observability, governance, and secure data distribution.

• Track delivered outputs against planned KPIs and expected value measures to ensure the data capability delivered the intended business, operational, clinical, and stakeholder outcomes.

What We're Looking For:

Skills:

• Deep technical expertise in enterprise data engineering, including ingestion patterns, transformation frameworks, lakehouse architecture, medallion design, data quality, metadata management, and operational support.

• Strong matrixed leadership and orchestration skills, with demonstrated ability to influence and align technical/data engineering, Clinical Operations, Commercial, governance, analytics, and business stakeholders without relying on direct reporting relationships.

• Predominant experience with life sciences data environments, including Real-World Data, clinical research data, healthcare data, regulated data environments, GxP expectations, privacy controls, sponsor/client needs, and data governance.

• Strong business stakeholder engagement skills, with experience aligning technology capabilities to clinical, operational, commercial, and sponsor-facing outcomes

• Hands-on knowledge of cloud data platforms and engineering tools, particularly Azure Databricks, Azure Data Lake, SQL, Python, Spark, APIs, orchestration frameworks, CI/CD, and monitoring practices.

• Ability to apply product- and program-management discipline, structured delivery discipline, and coordination/orchestration discipline to data engineering delivery, including intake management, roadmap development, backlog shaping, prioritization, dependency management, delivery tracking, success measures, and stakeholder-ready communications.

• Proven ability to manage cross-team dependencies, delivery risks, prioritization tradeoffs, capacity constraints, and competing stakeholder expectations in a matrixed organization.

Knowledge and Experience

• Strong advanced level experience of IT, data, analytics, or technology, with a predominant focus on life sciences, clinical research, healthcare data, RWD, or regulated data environments, including significant hands-on leadership in enterprise data engineering, integration, cloud platforms, and data delivery.

• Previous high level experience leading complex data engineering, data delivery, or analytics platform initiatives in life sciences, clinical research, healthcare, or RWD environments through matrixed leadership, including coordination across ingestion, engineering, distribution, Clinical Operations, Commercial, governance, analytics, and business stakeholders.

• Strong previous technical leadership or matrixed delivery leadership experience, including:

• Successfully developing and implementing applications in new computing architecture environments using innovative technologies.

• Influencing technical and business teams across multiple project lifecycle phases; cross-functional leadership across technical, clinical, commercial, governance, and analytics stakeholders is highly desirable.

• Leading resources to achieve goals across multiple projects.

• Developing efficient and effective solutions to complex business challenges.

• Experience working directly with business and operational stakeholders to translate business needs into technology priorities, delivery plans, success measures, and realized outcomes.

• Experience in life sciences, clinical research, healthcare, RWD, or regulated data environments is expected; experience with clinical trial operations, sponsor-facing data delivery, regulatory-aware analytics, or commercial life sciences data is strongly preferred.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field (required)

In return we will be able to offer you a structured career pathway and encouragement to develop within the role including awareness and understanding of the industry. You will be well supported and in return for your hard work you will be rewarded with a competitive base salary, bonus, car allowance and holiday as well as other leading benefits you would expect with a top company in the CRO Industry.