Director - Data and Solutions Engineering - Pharmacology and Modalities

About the Department                                                                                                                                             

At Novo Nordisk, we don't wait for change. We drive it. We're a dynamic company in an even more dynamic industry, and we know that what got us to where we are today is not necessarily what will make us successful in the future. We embrace the spirit of experimentation, striving for excellence without fixating on perfection. We never shy away from opportunities to develop, we seize them. From research and development, through to manufacturing, marketing and sales - we're all working to move the needle on patient care.  As such, The successful candidate will have experience working collaboratively in a matrixed organization. They will have a proven track record of creating business results with impact at various levels in a large complex global organization. They will have responsibility for being a strong team player, manager and coach.

The Position

Are you an engaging and motivating leader who can bridge between digital and science, and do you have the drive and experience to take a leadership role focused on data solutions in a global, scientific environment? If so, then become part of the next wave of scientific discovery by joining Digital Science & Innovation (DSI) and the Data Products Function. The data products function aims to digitally enable Novo Nordisk to derive actionable insights and scientific value to accelerate therapeutic drug discovery and development through the primary and secondary use of data.

The Director of Data and Solutions Engineering leads a team that has responsibility across R&ED for the delivery of analysis ready data products for our pharmacology data (in-vitro, in-vivo, ADME, PKPD and toxicology) across a range of therapeutic areas and modalities. The Director will also be responsible for ensuring that the technical capabilities of the data platform are modality (peptide, RNAi, antibody, cell therapy) agnostic. The Director will manage the implementation and configuration of commercial solutions. Responsibilities also include the integration of data products, data life cycle maintenance, support, and end-user training.

The team's responsibilities will include providing findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable pharmacology data to data consumers including computational scientists, citizen data scientists, bots and laboratory scientists. The team of data engineers, specialists and product owners will build and deploy production pipelines in a consistent and scalable environment.

The team will partner with the scientific architecture, software products, data representation (meta data and ontologies) teams to deliver an integrated data catalog, data lake, data pipelines, and secure APIs for cost-efficient data product delivery.

The lead will partner with the business capability leader to stimulate discovery and innovation in key therapeutic areas by understanding the strongest value proposition for delivering high quality data into an integrated ecosystem. The leader will partner to iterate and innovate while also ensuring consistent delivery and stable operation of products. The leader will be an expert and champion for the use of agile solution delivery and will leverage external partners as needed for resource augmentation.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Building and leading a highly talented team of data engineers, product owners and specialists with the right level of domain and technical expertise
• Selecting, implementing, and building an industry-leading integrated data ecosystem for pharmacology
• Developing strategic competency for data engineering and software development
• Supporting and enabling end users to adopt data sharing and use practices
• Training users on new software

Relationships

The Director Data and Solutions Engineering reports to the Vice President (VP), Data Products.  Internal partners include other team leaders in the Data Management and Informatics area within the Digital Science and Innovation Organization, as well as more broadly in Research, Corporate IT and the Global Data Office. Furthermore, key partners and stake holders include global clinical, medical and biological experts across US and Denmark.

External relationships include relationships with commercial and academic collaboration partners.

Essential Functions

• Recruits, manages and leads a global team to deliver analysis ready pharmacology data
• Collaborate across various data science, scientific research and pharmacology teams to deliver high quality data
• Collect relevant data elements and implement data pipelines (data acquisition, preparation, cleaning, and consolidation)
• Partners to deliver enterprise cloud-based data solutions and pipelines for deriving value from data
• Understand repeatable data delivery patterns and drives implementation of best practices within the team
• Deliver with an agile product delivery mindset
• Identify and propose improvement initiatives that evolve and improve the way the team works and collaborates
• Actively establish and maintain a network of relationships to enable both self and team to efficiently drive impact across the global organization
• Demonstrates ability to drive frequent collaborations with external commercial and academic partners

Physical Requirements

5%-20% overnight travel required.

Development of People

Ensure that reporting personnel have individual development plans (IDP), with annual goals and measurements that are consistent with the priorities of the business, and that interim reviews are held so that their work is focused on those priorities, and they understand their level of accountability for results and the measurement process. Ensure that the IDP forms include completed learning and aspiration plans and are in place for all reporting personnel to enable the achievement of goals and capability to assume increased levels of responsibility. Manage the application and communication of all Novo Nordisk policies, procedures, and Novo Nordisk Way.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree with (10+) years required. Master’s degree with (8+) years or PhD with (6+) years of relevant experience. Degree within computer science, mathematics, engineering, physics, statistics, or a related quantitative discipline is preferred
• Relevant experience includes:
  • Experience with gathering/organizing large & complex data assets, recommend appropriate data models for different needs and implement systems for data ETL/ELT, audit, QC, governance, and optimized consumption
  • Ensuring high availability, scalability, latency, governance, reusability, consistent and security in implemented systems
  • Partnering with business owners, data scientist, engineering, and IT understand business needs, translating into technical specification, and prioritizing implementation plan         
  • Building and operationalize of complex data, correct problems, apply transformations, and recommending data cleansing/quality solutions
  • Experience developing and deploying solutions in cloud environments such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud
  • Experience mentoring and/or building a team of engineers
  • Experience with AWS data-related services such as Storage Gateway, CloudWatch, Glue, Athena, S3, Lambda, Data Pipeline, Data Migration, Step functions
  • Experience with SQL, DynamoDB, RedShift, EFS, EMR, EBS, ElastiCache and other relational/non-relational database technologies/concepts
• Preferred experience:
  • Experience in pharmaceutical industry, healthcare industry, regulated medical device development or in another regulated field preferred
  • Experience with CI/CD, ETL/ELT practices (profiling, cleansing, transforming, developing and documenting data structures, schemas and dictionaries)
  • Proficiency in version control (Git, GitHub) and agile software management tools (JIRA, Confluence)
  • Working knowledge of scripting languages (Python, R, Scala, Julia a plus)
  • Experience working within GxP and cybersecurity requirements is a plus
• Ability to influence, collaborate, and lead technical teams in a complex organization
• Excellent written and oral communication skills

We commit to an inclusive recruitment process and equality of opportunity for all our job applicants.

At Novo Nordisk we recognize that it is no longer good enough to aspire to be the best company in the world. We need to aspire to be the best company for the world and we know that this is only possible with talented employees with diverse perspectives, backgrounds and cultures. We are therefore committed to creating an inclusive culture that celebrates the diversity of our employees, the patients we serve and communities we operate in. Together, we’re life changing.

Novo Nordisk is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by local, state or federal laws, rules or regulations.

Novo Nordisk requires all new hires to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 prior to the first date of employment. As required by applicable law, Novo Nordisk will consider requests for reasonable accommodation.

If you are interested in applying to Novo Nordisk and need special assistance or an accommodation to apply, please call us at 1-855-411-5290. This contact is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.