Senior Director/ Head Research Engineering

Role Summary

The Senior Director of Research Engineering is a service-oriented, forward-thinking team leader who oversees a team engaged in the collaborative design, development and implementation of scientific use-case driven, experimental, innovative, scientific data management and analytical platforms within the Informatics and Predictive Sciences (IPS) department at Bristol Myers Squibb. This role leverages deep scientific and technical expertise, close collaboration with scientific researchers, and knowledge of modern best practices in cloud-based scientific application development and recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) to build, deploy, and enhance a mix of bespoke, commercial and open-source scientific data management and delivery systems, data ingestion pipelines, visualizations, and analytical tools. This position oversees work performed within the Research Engineering team that works closely with scientific subject matter experts, product and program managers, and Research and Enterprise IT teams to ensure that architectural design, resourcing, product development and delivery align with business objectives, scientific needs, and technical best practices.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with Research leadership to ensure clear communication, tracking and delivery of shared Research objectives.
• Ensure that staffing objectives are met through onboarding and mentorship for Research Engineering full-time talent, as well as oversight of consulting resources across multiple vendors.
• Provide guidance to development teams on the appropriate selection of programming languages, evaluation frameworks, security and testing methodologies, and system scalability strategies.
• Collaboratively develop new data engineering approaches to accelerate data discovery, delivery and analysis, including the use of LLMs.
• Provide thought leadership on emerging LLM and AI models and capabilities and drive experimentation in service to BMS use cases.
• Evaluate third party data engineering and LLM solutions and manage vendor contracts.
• Participate in organizational budget planning and management and provide leadership for budgeting decisions for Research Engineering.
• Collaborate closely with IT to perform risk assessments on new or existing cloud architectures and vendor solutions to identify cost, scalability, or any other infrastructure management concerns.
• Provide oversight and guidance regarding regulatory requirements for custom developed, commercial and/or open-source systems, including 21 CFR Part 11, HIPAA, GDPR, GxP, etc.

Skills

• Experience building and maintaining cloud-native applications using core AWS services such as IAM, S3, Athena, Glue, Batch, Lambda, Fargate, API Gateway, Bedrock, etc.
• Advanced proficiency with Python, SQL, R, database design, and at least one front end development framework (React, Angular, Streamlit, or similar).
• Experience with large-scale scientific systems design and integration patterns, including mapping use cases to best practice architectural and integration patterns.
• Ability to deliver performance evaluations, benchmarking, and troubleshooting of AI or LLM-based applications.
• Familiarity with containerization approaches, agile methodologies, and cloud-native development patterns.
• Experience building or enhancing a laboratory informatics system (LIMS), specifically in a research or drug development context.
• Ability to explore and pilot innovative technology solutions, including LLM technologies.
• Experience with managing large development teams and projects in a highly collaborative environment.
• Experience in managing budgets, and vendor contracts.

Education

• Bachelor's Degree with 15+ years of academic / industry experience
• Or master's degree with 12+ years of academic / industry experience
• Or PhD with 10+ years of academic / industry experience in an engineering or biology field.
• 8+ years of leadership experience

Qualifications

• Preferred: Combined 10+ years' experience developing large-scale cloud based scientific data management and/or analytical platforms in a Biotechnology or Pharmaceutical industry with 6+ years' experience in a relevant leadership role.
• Experience in a strategic architecture role working with LLM capabilities including use of industry leading models, RAG approaches, agentic frameworks, LLM testing frameworks, etc.
• Excellent communication skills: Demonstrated experience interacting with technical product designers to gather solution architecture requirements, and ability to perform designated tasks in a timely manner.
• Proven track record of successfully managing technical projects and leading cross-functional teams.
• Ability to multitask in a fast-paced research and technical environment.
• Demonstrated capacity for independent thinking and care about the underlying biological questions and advancement of science for patient benefit.