Head of Engineering - Data Experience

Location: Hybrid

Medidata follows a hybrid office policy in which employees who are hired for an in-person position are expected to work on site a certain number of days per week in accordance with Company policy.

About our Company:

Medidata is powering smarter treatments and healthier people through digital solutions to support clinical trials. Celebrating 25 years of ground-breaking technological innovation across more than 36,000 trials and 11 million patients, Medidata offers industry-leading expertise, analytics-powered insights, and one of the largest clinical trial data sets in the industry. More than 1 million users trust Medidata's seamless, end-to-end platform to improve patient experiences, accelerate clinical breakthroughs, and bring therapies to market faster. Discover more at www.medidata.com.

About the Team:

We are searching for a visionary and deeply technical Head of Engineering to lead our engineering organization in Data Experience. We operate a complex, globally distributed system requiring high availability for all critical services, robust redundancy, automated failover, and proactive incident management. This executive role is responsible for designing and managing the infrastructure to achieve and exceed our availability targets and continuous performance optimization of our entire platform, with specialized focus on the security and scalability of our core product pillars.

Reporting to the SVP of Engineering in the Research and Development (RnD) organization, you will be responsible for translating the product vision for the Data Experience into an enterprise-grade, regulated software platform, while fostering a culture of high performance and GxP-compliant engineering practices.

Key Responsibilities Technical Strategy & Architecture

• Define the long-term technical roadmap and cloud architecture (microservices, data mesh, serverless) to support massive scalability and high availability across all product lines.

• Own the technical evaluation, selection, and implementation of all foundational technologies and infrastructure (cloud provider, monitoring, security tools).

• Focus on fault-tolerant architectures and disaster recovery (DR)

• Champion DevOps and SRE practices to ensure rapid, compliant, and reliable deployment cycles in a regulated environment.

• Ensure AI services are seamlessly integrated into our core infrastructure, prioritizing system reliability, data interoperability and scalable MLOps that ensure industry leading testing, CI/CD and security protocols that align to Medidata standards.

Engineering Leadership & Operations

• Lead, mentor, and scale the entire engineering function, including data, quality assurance (QA), and specialized product teams.

• Along with the other Experience Engineering leads, implement and govern a strict Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) that meets global regulatory requirements (e.g., GxP, ISO standards, 21 CFR Part 11) 

• Manage technical debt, optimize development budgets, and drive continuous improvement in code quality and team velocity.

       Collaboration & Communication

• Partner with the Head of Product - Data Experience to build achievable roadmaps that will meet customer needs while innovating and addressing technical debt.
• Negotiate and implement internal service level objectives (SLOs) and service level agreements (SLAs) to ensure products meet realistic performance expectations.
• This role will work in collaboration with the other experience Engineering leads to create foundational standards across the entire organization.

• Manage status and timeline communications to our customers regarding all CIRTs allowing engineers to focus on diagnosis and resolution. 

• Collaborate with the Platform AI and teams to co-author the technical roadmap, ensuring that AI-driven features are supported by a highly available, secure, and compliant cloud architecture that meets the rigorous demands of a healthcare environment.

Technical Ownership Across Product Pillars

1. Data Architecture & Governance:

   • Design and oversee the implementation of petabyte-scale data pipelines and the underlying data governance framework to ensure data integrity, quality, and traceability (audit trails).

   • Build the technical infrastructure to support AI/ML model deployment for scientific insights, ensuring computational efficiency and reproducibility.

2. Data Experience Platform:

   • Direct the architecture of core transactional systems (e.g., EDC, RTSM, Coding, Imaging functionality, etc), focusing on interoperability via standardized APIs (e.g., FHIR, CDISC) for seamless integration with external clinical systems.

   • Ensure the technical design supports rigorous system validation requirements, including robust configuration management and version control necessary for regulatory audits.

Qualifications Required Experience  

• 10+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, with 5+ years managing highly available mission critical applications in a high-growth, enterprise software setting.

• Deep expertise in building secure, scalable cloud-native platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).

• Strong architectural background, capable of driving decisions on data storage, messaging queues, and microservices patterns.

• Experience managing engineering teams across multiple distinct product domains, specifically those that involve large datasets and patient-facing applications.

• Expertise in building high-performing engineering teams by combining a passion for career coaching with the ability to implement rigorous engineering processes that drive consistent, high-quality output.

  Preferred Experience  

• Degree in a scientific, medical, or technical discipline (e.g., Computer Science, Biology, Public Health).

• Experience with large-scale data modeling and architectures for clinical or genomic data.

• Professional certifications in Cloud Architecture, Security (e.g., CISSP), or relevant compliance standards.

• Prior experience working closely with Scientific R&D teams to implement computational biology or data science tools.

• Proven success in implementing and operating a Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) within highly regulated environments, such as those adhering to GxP/21 CFR Part 11, is preferred.

The salary range posted below refers only to positions that will be physically based in New York City. As with all roles, Medidata sets ranges based on a number of factors including function, level, candidate expertise and experience, and geographic location.

The salary range for positions that will be physically based in the NYC Metro Area is $216,000 - $288,000.

Base pay is one part of the Total Rewards that Medidata provides to compensate and recognize employees for their work. Most sales positions are eligible for a commission on the terms of applicable plan documents, and many of Medidata's non-sales positions are eligible for annual bonuses. Medidata believes that benefits should connect you to the support you need when it matters most and provides best-in-class benefits, including medical, dental, life and disability insurance; 401(k) matching; flexible paid time off; and 10 paid holidays per year.

Applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

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