Head of Platform Architecture

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany; Billerica (MA); On-site; USD 196,000 - 294,000; Full time

Job summary

Merck KGaA is seeking a senior platform architect to own the technical foundation for enterprise-grade data products and digital platforms. You will translate complex customer and business needs into secure, scalable architectures while staying close to implementation.

Based in the US (Burlington or Billerica, MA), you will mentor engineers, design multi-tenant cloud strategies, and ensure security, privacy and regulatory compliance across platforms and deployments.

Qualifications

• Significant experience designing and building sophisticated software, cloud, data or AI platforms at enterprise scale.
• Experience designing secure multi-tenant platforms and multi-cloud, hybrid deployment models.
• Hands-on experience with security frameworks such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, NIST, GDPR and HIPAA/GxP where relevant.

Responsibilities

• Own the platform architecture for commercial, cloud-native data platforms and digital products across a portfolio.
• Define target architecture, security principles, and deployment strategies across products and deployment models.
• Establish principles for reuse, security, scalability and supportability; ensure conformity with audit and compliance controls.
• Stay technically close to implementation and mentor engineers across levels, including senior staff.

Skills

Platform architecture

Multi-tenant deployment

Security and compliance

Data platforms

Palantir Foundry

Commercial software

Cloud-native architecture

Data governance

Technical leadership

Job description

Work Your Magic with us! Start your next chapter and join EMD Serono.

Ready to explore, break barriers, and discover more? We know you’ve got big plans – so do we! Our colleagues across the globe love innovating with science and technology to enrich people’s lives with our solutions in Healthcare, Life Science, and Electronics. Together, we dream big and are passionate about caring for our rich mix of people, customers, patients, and planet. That's why we are always looking for curious minds that see themselves imagining the unimaginable with us.

United As One for Patients, our purpose in Healthcare is to help create, improve and prolong lives. We develop medicines, intelligent devices and innovative technologies in therapeutic areas such as Oncology, Neurology and Fertility. Our teams work together across 6 continents with passion and relentless curiosity in order to help patients at every stage of life. Joining our Healthcare team is becoming part of a diverse, inclusive and flexible working culture, presenting great opportunities for personal development and career advancement across the globe.

This role does not offer sponsorship for work authorization. External applicants must be eligible to work in the US.

Your Role

We are looking for a senior, hands‑on platform architect to own the technical foundation for commercial, enterprise‑grade data products and digital platforms. Together with your team, you will translate complex customer and business needs into secure, resilient and maintainable architectures, while staying close enough to implementation to remain credible with principal and staff engineers. You will define reusable capabilities that help teams move from prototype to customer‑ready product without compromising product ownership or customer value.

Can sit in Burlington or Billerica

Your Responsibilities

• Own the platform architecture
  
  
  
  • Define and communicate the target architecture for commercial, cloud‑native data platforms and digital products across a portfolio of products and deployment models, translating ambiguous customer and business needs into technical strategy, platform capabilities and delivery roadmaps.
  
  
  • Establish architectural principles, standards and decision frameworks covering reuse, security, scalability and supportability.
  
  
  • Design data and AI platforms across heterogeneous sources, including ingestion, transformation, storage, analytics, provenance, lineage, quality, access control and secure multi‑tenancy.
  
  
  • Design appropriate SaaS, multi‑cloud, hybrid and customer‑managed deployment strategies, balancing security, data residency, resilience, cost and portability.
  
  
  • Design APIs, integration patterns, identity and authentication services, event‑driven and distributed components.
  
  
  • Make build‑versus‑buy‑versus‑partner decisions across platforms such as Palantir Foundry, cloud services, managed SaaS and open source.
  
  
  
  


• Architect for security and compliance
  
  
  
  • Apply security‑by‑design and defense‑in‑depth, including threat modeling, identity, least privilege, encryption, secure software delivery and vulnerability management.
  
  
  • Design platforms that are certifiable and audit‑ready, partnering with security, privacy, quality, legal and audit functions on controls, evidence and customer assessments.
  
  
  • Translate relevant security, privacy and regulated‑industry frameworks, such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, NIST, GDPR and GxP, into concrete architectural controls.
  
  
  • Shape secure multi‑party data ecosystems that preserve data ownership, provenance, permissions, isolation and control over data use.
  
  
  
  


• Stay technically close to implementation
  
  
  
  • Review designs, prototypes and critical code paths to surface architectural and operational risk early.
  
  
  • Establish practices for infrastructure‑as‑code, CI/CD, testing, release management, observability and production debugging.
  
  
  • Help teams industrialize prototypes and MVPs and resolve difficult problems across application, infrastructure, data and security boundaries, choosing technologies according to the problem rather than habit.
  
  
  
  


• Lead and communicate
  
  
  
  • Provide technical direction and mentorship across levels, including senior and principal engineers, and raise the technical bar without becoming a bottleneck.
  
  
  • Support hiring, team design and capability development in partnership with engineering leadership.
  
  
  • Explain architectural decisions, limitations, costs and trade‑offs clearly to engineers, product leaders, customers, partners, auditors and executives.
  
  
  
  

Who You Are

Minimum Qualifications

• Platform architecture depth: significant experience designing and building sophisticated software, cloud, data or AI platforms and customer‑facing digital products at enterprise scale, with the ability to translate customer problems into architectures and executable roadmaps.


• Multi‑tenant and deployment architecture: experience designing secure multi‑tenant platforms and multi‑cloud, hybrid‑cloud or customer‑managed deployment models.


• Security and compliance: substantial hands‑on experience owning secure architecture decisions in production, with working knowledge of relevant frameworks such as ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2, NIST, GDPR and, where relevant, HIPAA or GxP/GAMP 5.

Preferred Qualifications

• Building platforms that connect sensitive data, including healthcare or clinical data, across organizational, business or legal boundaries.


• Palantir Foundry or comparable enterprise data platforms, including data products, ontology, governance and lineage.


• Experience building commercial software products, partner ecosystems, customer‑managed deployments or cyber‑physical and digital‑twin solutions.


• Cloud‑native architecture: demonstrated depth on at least one major provider, including containers, serverless, networking, IAM and observability.


• Data‑platform architecture: experience with ingestion, transformation, storage, analytics, lineage, access controls, tenant‑aware governance and data quality.


• Technical leadership: credibility to challenge senior engineers, communicate across technical and commercial audiences, and lead collaboratively as a player‑coach.

Pay Range for this position: $195,800-$293,800

The offer range represents the anticipated low and high end of the base pay compensation for this position. The actual compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, level of experience, education, skills, and other job‑related factors. Position may be eligible for sales or performance‑based bonuses. Benefits offered by the Company include health insurance, paid time off (PTO), retirement contributions, and other perquisites.

What we offer:

We are curious minds that come from a broad range of backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences. We believe that this variety drives excellence and innovation, strengthening our ability to lead in science and technology. We are committed to creating access and opportunities for all to develop and grow at your own pace. Join us in building a culture of inclusion and belonging that impacts millions and empowers everyone to work their magic and champion human progress!