Associate Director AWS Architect

Job Description Summary

Novartis Biomedical Research (BR) is the global pharmaceutical research organization of Novartis. With approximately 6,000 scientists and physicians around the world, our research is focused on discovering innovative new drugs that will change the practice of medicine. We have an open and entrepreneurial culture, encouraging collaboration to make effective therapies.
At BR, our mission is to discover innovative medicines that treat disease and human health. To do that, our scientists need cutting-edge, state-of-the-art computing systems.
With Research Informatics (RX), BR is making a strategic investment into informatics capabilities and is positioning itself to deliver the systems and services that are critical to the future of drug discovery.

 

Job Description

Purpose of the Role:

Within RX, the Engineering department delivers excellence in software, data, and core engineering. It is responsible for building powerful, functional, beautiful, and secure scientific and IT software solutions that accelerate scientific research and deliver a fully integrated and frictionless user experience. The Engineering department is also responsible for providing engineering resources that create and maintain these software solutions in line with the priorities and roadmaps defined by the product teams and our business stakeholders.

As a Technical Associate Director in the Core Engineering team within BR’s 400-people strong Informatics organization (RX), you will be responsible for supporting the design and development of our next generation of software tools in AWS. Working in a highly collaborative environment, you will partner with engineers, product managers, user researchers, and data scientists to drive product innovation and launch new capabilities that enable scalable, secure, and intuitive access to research data by BR’s global scientific community.

Major Accountabilities (may include but not limited to):

• Work with the corporate infrastructure teams to define and drive BR’s AWS platform in alignment with our technology strategy and direction
• Participate in architecture reviews and impact assessments on infrastructure-related demand from the cross-divisional planning team and the architecture review forum
• Maximize the impact of our product organization by providing best practices and standards related to modern infrastructure
• Evaluating and recommending appropriate AWS services and tools to meet business and technical requirements.
• Support effective escalations of infrastructure-related incidents when seriously affecting large parts of engineering
• Support the formation of the infrastructure strategy pillar of the BR technology strategy
• Provide consultancy around software tools, platforms, and methodologies as well as suggest innovative ways to leverage modern infrastructure practices
• Drive for high degrees of automation and self-service to minimize support and maintenance costs, enable efficient scalability of our platforms and services to users, and to enable and empower RX users to be self-sufficient

• Demonstrate strong technical and thought leadership and ability to influence and guide the work of others (including beyond RX)
• Ensure adherence to Novartis global Information Security and Quality standards and policies for all products/services.
• If applicable, ensure Regulatory Compliance (e.g. GLP & GCP) standards and policies for GxP products/services.

This position will be located at the Cambridge, MA site and will not have the ability to be located remotely.
 

What will you bring to the role:

• At least 8 years of hands-on infrastructure experience (may include academic training)
• Extensive experience of software deployment in cloud environments on AWS
• Familiarity with containerization and virtualization technology, including the use of Docker and containers to modularize and deploy complex services and web applications
• Experience with implementing and managing the deployment automation and infrastructure-as-code processes using tools like AWS CloudFormation and Terraform.
• Collaborative mindset and team spirit
• Well-structured working style with open and clear communication that enables effective collaboration across multiple teams, sites, and time zones
• Conducting regular knowledge-sharing sessions and training programs to educate team members and stakeholders about AWS best practices and technologies
• Strong customer focus and interpersonal skills
• Attention to detail and passion for the end-user experience

Preferred Experience:

• Experience in life sciences and p