At the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research Inc (NIBR), our mission is to discover innovative medicines that treat disease and human health. The best and brightest scientists need cutting-edge, state-of-the-art computing systems.
Pharma in general is currently going through a major transition like that in financial services over the last 30 years or so. Essentially scientists have to look at 10,000 times as much data to discover a new drug and they aren't going to be able to do it in Excel. We are designing and building the platforms now that will turn into the platforms and solutions the drug discovery industry won't be able to function without 20-30 years from now. That includes data platforms (at any given time we have over a petabyte of data to manage) and plumbing as well as business logic, analysis and visualization. Every solution we put in the scientists hands has a chance to solve a problem that has never been solved before. It's also fun to remember that we have no sales department and no marketing department: our customers are 5000 scientists who are trying to solve a problem. If we can find a solution they will use it.
People joining now get many of the benefits of both a large company (stability, pay, benefits) and a startup (open to change, ability to wear multiple hats, challenging technical problems to solve, creative and intellectual environment) at the same time. Think Google Labs but without the project shelving!
The senior data architect will report directly to the Head of Data Engineering and will be a member of the Data Engineering organization at NIBR-IT. This role will work with scientists, software and database developers to implement world class database solution for bioinformatics and drug discovery, including but not limited to scientific data-warehouses.
The Data Engineering Group is a team of world-class senior engineers/architects who are committed to empowering scientists with data and information systems to discover drugs more effectively and efficiently. Our team supports the global NIBR research community, providing them with cutting edge software and data management solutions. The members in this group participate in groundbreaking medical research activities working hands-on with world-class scientists and informaticians all over the world.
The Data Engineering Group is the core of a broad and diverse data engineering community within NIBR — members of the group are responsible for formal as well as informal influence on data architecture issues within this community of highly driven and top performing individuals.
Major Accountabilities
The technical lead will be expected to
• Architect and develop data solutions.
• Provide technical expertise, including overseeing the design, development and implementation of enterprise level data warehouses in alignment of the global NIBR data architecture
• Lead the investigation and evaluation of new data solutions and technologies
• Build and deploy real production systems with scientists who have high expectations for quality, turnaround, performance and reliability
• Create and promote interoperable systems and promote the efficient reuse of software and data between disparate systems within NIBR
• Work closely with the operations teams who will manage and support the systems being developed
• Able and willing to lead by example and be hands-on