Director, Enterprise Data & AI Platform
Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
July 01, 2026
Remote friendly (Carlsbad, CA)
United States
IT
Summary
- Reporting to the VP, Data & Analytics, serve as senior technical leader responsible for operationalizing the Ioniverse as an enterprise-scale data and AI platform centered on Databricks and modern cloud engineering practices.
- Own the Ioniverse platform roadmap, technical direction, architecture standards, and delivery guardrails to move trusted data and AI solutions into production safely, quickly, and consistently.
Location
- Preference is onsite/hybrid; willing to consider remote.
Responsibilities
- Own Ioniverse platform roadmap, technical direction, and architecture standards for enterprise data and AI solutions (Databricks as core foundation).
- Define and implement target-state patterns for data pipelines, semantic access, AI enablement, observability, security, and production support.
- Lead design/automation/optimization/operational support of data engineering environments across dev, test, and production.
- Establish onboarding standards/guardrails/promotion paths for domain data products from sandbox to certified production.
- Define and enforce standards for data quality, metadata, lineage, certification, stewardship, access control, and reuse.
- Build reusable accelerators, templates, reference architectures, playbooks, and shared platform services.
- Implement DevOps best practices for CI/CD, monitoring, cost optimization, and MLOps.
- Partner with BRPs, portfolio leads, domain product owners, data stewards, and technical teams to align priorities and certification expectations.
- Assess tools/vendors with bias toward leveraging Ionis investments and reducing fragmentation.
- Define interoperable data, workflow, and semantic patterns across enterprise domains.
- Lead consulting/vendor partners and act hands-on: prototype, troubleshoot, and implement defined architecture/patterns.
Requirements
- Significant experience in data platform/data engineering/analytics engineering/AI-ML platform/architecture with hands-on delivery responsibility.
- Strong Databricks and cloud-based data platform experience in enterprise production environments.
- Proven ability to design and implement production-grade data, analytics, automation, and AI solutions.
- Experience with cloud architecture, pipeline design, DevOps, and production support.
- Experience defining standards for data quality, metadata, lineage, governance, access control, and lifecycle management.
- Strong SQL and Python.
- Ability to translate business priorities into architecture, roadmaps, standards, and execution decisions.
- Strong judgment in architecture trade-offs and build-versus-buy/vendor evaluation.
- Life sciences or other regulated industry experience (data governance, cross-functional data product design, platform operating models).
- Familiarity with Unity Catalog, MLflow, semantic layers, AI-assisted analytics; enterprise systems spanning SAP, CRM, ERP, Commercial, and Clinical.
- 15 years related experience with a bachelor’s degree, or 12 years with a master’s degree.
Application Instructions
- Apply on the website; reference requisition #IONIS004049.
Benefits/Pay
- Pay scale: $159,053–$268,000
- Reporting to the VP, Data & Analytics, serve as senior technical leader responsible for operationalizing the Ioniverse as an enterprise-scale data and AI platform centered on Databricks and modern cloud engineering practices.
- Own the Ioniverse platform roadmap, technical direction, architecture standards, and delivery guardrails to move trusted data and AI solutions into production safely, quickly, and consistently.
Location
- Preference is onsite/hybrid; willing to consider remote.
Responsibilities
- Own Ioniverse platform roadmap, technical direction, and architecture standards for enterprise data and AI solutions (Databricks as core foundation).
- Define and implement target-state patterns for data pipelines, semantic access, AI enablement, observability, security, and production support.
- Lead design/automation/optimization/operational support of data engineering environments across dev, test, and production.
- Establish onboarding standards/guardrails/promotion paths for domain data products from sandbox to certified production.
- Define and enforce standards for data quality, metadata, lineage, certification, stewardship, access control, and reuse.
- Build reusable accelerators, templates, reference architectures, playbooks, and shared platform services.
- Implement DevOps best practices for CI/CD, monitoring, cost optimization, and MLOps.
- Partner with BRPs, portfolio leads, domain product owners, data stewards, and technical teams to align priorities and certification expectations.
- Assess tools/vendors with bias toward leveraging Ionis investments and reducing fragmentation.
- Define interoperable data, workflow, and semantic patterns across enterprise domains.
- Lead consulting/vendor partners and act hands-on: prototype, troubleshoot, and implement defined architecture/patterns.
Requirements
- Significant experience in data platform/data engineering/analytics engineering/AI-ML platform/architecture with hands-on delivery responsibility.
- Strong Databricks and cloud-based data platform experience in enterprise production environments.
- Proven ability to design and implement production-grade data, analytics, automation, and AI solutions.
- Experience with cloud architecture, pipeline design, DevOps, and production support.
- Experience defining standards for data quality, metadata, lineage, governance, access control, and lifecycle management.
- Strong SQL and Python.
- Ability to translate business priorities into architecture, roadmaps, standards, and execution decisions.
- Strong judgment in architecture trade-offs and build-versus-buy/vendor evaluation.
- Life sciences or other regulated industry experience (data governance, cross-functional data product design, platform operating models).
- Familiarity with Unity Catalog, MLflow, semantic layers, AI-assisted analytics; enterprise systems spanning SAP, CRM, ERP, Commercial, and Clinical.
- 15 years related experience with a bachelor’s degree, or 12 years with a master’s degree.
Application Instructions
- Apply on the website; reference requisition #IONIS004049.
Benefits/Pay
- Pay scale: $159,053–$268,000