Director, Scientific Capability Engineering

Chemical Abstracts Service; Columbus (OH); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Chemical Abstracts Service is seeking a Director of Scientific Capability Engineering to lead the team building and scaling scientific tools and APIs across chemistry, life science, and materials science. You will set strategy, govern architecture, and partner with product and leadership to drive the capability roadmap.

The role oversees a multi-domain engineering organization, manages budget and vendor relationships, and ensures reliability, data quality, and compliance to accelerate innovation.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Chemistry, Life Sciences, or related field; advanced degree preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive technology experience, including building tools and APIs for scientific or technical domains, plus 6+ years of people leadership experience, including managing managers.
• Experience scaling technical capability across multiple scientific domains or product lines preferred.

Responsibilities

• Owns the multi-year strategy and roadmap for scientific tools and API capability enablement across domains.
• Owns the extensible architecture and platform patterns for onboarding new domains without re-architecting core capability.
• Represents capability enablement strategy to senior leadership and translates roadmaps into technical investment decisions.
• Manages a team of managers and senior engineers, holding accountability for organizational performance, career development, and succession planning.
• Directs vendor and licensing strategy for scientific data, tools, and API infrastructure, evaluating renewals and usage against the organization's evolving needs.
• Builds business cases for incremental investments to support the roadmap.
• Communicates capability enablement status, risks, and delivery progress to senior leadership and relevant stakeholders.
• Owns the reliability, scalability, and quality of scientific tools and APIs in production, ensuring they meet the needs of internal and external consumers.
• Maintains governance, documentation, and operational standards that scale with the organization's growth.

Skills

API design

Leadership

Strategic planning

Cross-functional leadership

Data modeling

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Chemistry, Life Sciences, or related field

Tools

APIs architecture

Job description

CAS uses intuitive technology, unparalleled scientific content, and unmatched human expertise to help companies create groundbreaking innovations that benefit the world. As the scientific information solutions division of the American Chemical Society, CAS manages the largest curated reservoir of scientific knowledge and, for over a century, has helped innovators mine, assess, and apply that information to keep businesses thriving. The CAS team is global, diverse, endlessly curious, and strives to make scientific insights accessible to innovators worldwide.

The Director, Scientific Capability Engineering leads the organization responsible for developing and scaling the scientific tools and APIs that power CAS's growing multi-domain science portfolio, beginning with core chemistry and expanding into life science, materials science, and other emerging domains over time. This role sets the strategic direction and sequenced roadmap for capability enablement, is accountable for the technical foundation and performance of the organization across domains, and manages the organization's operational budget and vendor relationships within approved guidelines. This position partners with domain science leaders, Product, and Knowledge Platforms leadership to sequence investment across scientific domains.

Key Responsibilities

Capability Strategy & Roadmap

• Owns the multi-year strategy and roadmap for scientific tools and API capability enablement, sequencing investment across domains as the science portfolio grows.
• Owns the extensible architecture and platform patterns that allow new scientific domains to be onboarded without re-architecting core capability.
• Represents capability enablement strategy to senior leadership, translating scientific domain roadmaps into technical investment decisions.

Organizational Leadership & People Management

• Manages a team of managers and senior engineers, holding accountability for organizational performance, career development, and succession planning.
• Builds and scales domain-aware engineering capability.
• Mitigates single-point-of-failure and key-person risk across the organization by cross-training teams.
• Fosters a culture of scientific rigor and engineering excellence across a growing, multi-domain organization.

Budget & Vendor Management

• Owns the capability enablement operational budget, planning investment within guidelines set by senior leadership.
• Directs vendor and licensing strategy for scientific data, tools, and API infrastructure, evaluating renewals and usage against the organization's evolving needs.
• Builds business cases for incremental investments to support the roadmap.

Stakeholder & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Serves as the senior point of contact for capability enablement with Product, domain science leaders, and executive stakeholders across chemistry, life science, and materials science.
• Communicates capability enablement status, risks, and delivery progress to senior leadership and relevant stakeholders.
• Aligns with peer leaders across Knowledge Platforms and Application Technology on shared standards, integration patterns, and dependencies.

Operational & Risk Management

• Owns the reliability, scalability, and quality of scientific tools and APIs in production, ensuring they meet the needs of internal and external consumers.
• Achieves data quality, intellectual property protection, and compliance requirements.
• Maintains governance, documentation, and operational standards that scale with the organization's growth.

Qualifications

Education & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Chemistry, Life Sciences, or related field; advanced degree preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive technology experience, including building tools and APIs for scientific or technical domains, plus 6+ years of people leadership experience, including managing managers.
• Experience scaling technical capability across multiple scientific domains or product lines preferred.

Leadership & Business Competencies

• Able to set multi-year strategy and translate it into an executable, sequenced roadmap.
• Skilled at building and scaling organizations, including developing managers.
• Persuasive communicator able to align executive stakeholders and domain experts around a shared roadmap.

Technical Competencies

• Working knowledge of API design, scientific data modeling, and tools architecture.
• Familiarity with the scientific domains supported; deep chemistry knowledge required, with life science, materials science, and other scientific domain knowledge a plus.
• Understanding of how AI capabilities can accelerate scientific tool and API development.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

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