Senior Research Data Steward

About the Department                                                                                                                                               

Our Research & Development organization brings together the best minds in life science innovation. The teams located in facilities in Lexington, Watertown, Cambridge and Seattle reflect the full R&D continuum, from early research through late-stage clinical development. Here, we are building for the future, creating a distinct R&D community based on collaboration, partnerships, and cutting-edge research across multiple modalities and therapeutic areas. We recognize that improving human health starts here and that patients rely on us. Our R&D hub merges biotech speed and agility with large pharmaceutical company quality, resources, and stability, uniting the best of both worlds to develop new medicines for patients.

The Position

The Senior Research Data Steward is accountable for the management of pre-defined domains of data and metadata groups. Collaborating closely with data owners and data analysts, they will be responsible for data governance and management concerning data integrity, accuracy as well as privacy where required. This role will be a significant contributor to ensuring that data is complete, accurate, and timely.

Relationship

The Senior Research Data Steward will report to a manager of the Research Data Stewardship team. Internal partners include therapeutic area scientists, computational scientists, and engineers of data, software, or platforms in R&ED and IT organizations.

External relationships include relationships with commercial and academic collaboration partners.

No direct nor indirect reports.

Essential Functions

• Work and support diverse stakeholders across the company and with owners of specific data elements to assess, identify and address data quality or consistency issues
• Establish the data management plan for a given domain (including data quality and governance policies) and ensure that standards are being adhered to
• Drive change management to influence the adoption of standardized vocabulary within the established regulatory, compliance, and safety guidelines
• Understand ETL processes to efficiently obtain both internal and external data for analysis and integration into the organization's data ecosystem
• Communicate widely and set up training as required to train specialists and research scientists in data management processes including registration of new meta-data.
  • Popularize the use of controlled vocabularies, ontologies, and data management best practices through training and workshops
• ​​​​​​​Communicate effectively across all organizational levels, functions, and cultures; Communicate findings and recommendations to diverse audiences, including presentations to internal teams and external partners

Physical Requirements

Up to 10% overnight travel required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required. Master’s degree preferred. Degree in life sciences or a related field preferred
• 7+ years relevant experience required with a Bachelor’s degree or 5+ years relevant experience required with a Master’s degree.
• Relevant experience includes:
  • Experience with biological or chemical data management (for example genomics, bioinformatics, next-generation sequencing, microscopy, imaging)
  • Knowledge of data format standards, understanding of FAIR principles. Exposure to biomedical vocabularies and taxonomies, such as MeSH, SNOMED, ICD9/10, MedDRA would be an advantage
  • Proficiency in at least one scripting (programming) language, with a preference for Python. Also, experience with cloud platforms AWS, MS Azure or GCP would be considered an advantage
  • Experience with (meta) data management of heterogeneous datasets, ETL processes, data governance and stewardship
  • Understanding of proteins and protein structures, and small molecules and their properties would be an advantage

• Ability to present findings and project outcomes
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, with an emphasis on presentation abilities
• Detail oriented with strong documentation skills
• Ability to work independently and within teams across other areas

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.

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.