director, principal engineer, marketing crm platform

The vision for Pfizer’s Digital function is a more integrated and coordinated healthcare model that improves patient outcomes, fuels tomorrow’s breakthrough therapies, and brings medicines to patients faster.​

Within Pfizer Digital, the Biopharma, Patient & CDI group builds solutions for external customers throughout the product lifecycle​. We support stakeholders to engage external ​customers through digital solutions, whether that is patients, HCPs, payors, pharmacists, or clinical sites.

The Biopharma, Patient & CDI are thought partners and technical solution providers to commercial arms of the business (e.g., Pfizer’s ​salesforce or marketers), working at the intersection of technology and healthcare. 

Our vision is to innovate and engineer breakthrough digital products to power business performance and transform global health. We do this through our culture of agile, fast-adapting and pioneer working.
 

Within Biopharma, Patient & CDI, we have platform engineering teams. The MarTech platform team manages the customer data that Pfizer collects from its integrated websites, mobile apps and marketing platforms. We have a range of services including Identity, Consent Management, a fully-fledged CDP (Salesforce Data Cloud) and CRM (Marketing Cloud) as well as a range of subsidiary services and tool, e.g. analytics. Our platform has evolved over 10 years to send millions of emails and manage billions of customer interactions and events. 

Our mission for the coming years is to migrate from fragmented legacy implementations to a coherent customer-centric ecosystem of services built around Salesforce’s products. Our goal is to improve customer experience and especially to improve patient outcomes through intelligent, inventive and compliant use of the data collected as people interact with Pfizer’s customer-facing systems and assets.

Role Summary

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Principal Engineer who will be accountable for technical engineering decisions, solution designs, and delivery, as well as operations of their assigned program.

In this technical leadership role, you will act as the executor and the visionary behind technical solutions. You will lead teams of between 10 and 25 technical resources to solve complex engineering problems, craft the technical designs and ensure a successful delivery of high-quality products and services from inception to completion. This role requires exceptional technical knowledge, strong management skills, and the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams while sharing responsibility with the other program leads for achieving the desired objectives.

You will also be accountable for delivery of security-and privacy-first capabilities while creating an environment where engineers can do their best work as measured by a quarterly Developer’s Experience survey, and alignment and contribution to the service network and technical engineering standards.

Key Responsibilities

A normal work week consists of leading one or more teams of engineers to deliver and implement technical solutions, following your design approach to meet your assigned program objectives and KPIs. You will also collaborate closely and often with your program Chief Marketing Office Lead, Digital Lead, and Product Owners, to ensure that technical decisions and their implementation align with broader strategic priorities.

You represent engineering in program and stakeholder meetings, as such you’ll need to be able to think on your feet: provide consultation, identify risks based on a variety of factors, and rely on your past experiences to identify potential solutions and develop ballpark estimates.

In many situations you will be working with technology that is new to Pfizer and requires you to learn quickly, be able to read and understand documentation, and architect robust and scalable solutions that align with our business objectives.

Using influence more than authority, you will lead teams of engineers on the implementation of the solution. Individual members of the team are responsible for delivering on their commitments, but the team supports each other. The team pride themselves on the quality of their code, our delivery practices and breadth of our test coverage. You will be expected to document your work.

Key responsibilities for a Principal Engineer are listed below:

Technical Leadership 

• Be a source of knowledge about the Salesforce ecosystem, especially Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud, their implementation patterns, strengths, weaknesses and how they best integrate into our wider MarTech landscape. 

• Serve as the top technical authority on our projects. Work with SMEs to build consensus and be accountable for engineering/platform decisions on technology, design approaches, solution architecture and implementation.

• Facilitate the conversation between Enterprise Architects, Product, Vendors and Engineers, by providing technical clarity on solution(s) and how to move from ideation to reality.

• Build a team able to manage change. Take appropriate risks to achieve the desired results, balancing risks to stability and current norms versus the need for constant change, improvement, and simplification.

• Lead and oversee the entire lifecycle excellence of engineering projects, ensuring alignment with architectural vision and adherence to best practices.

• Responsible for maintaining good code quality in our team by promoting and ensuring secure code hygiene.

• Responsible for guiding the correct configuration of SaaS solutions to ensure security and compliance.

Cross-Team Collaboration

• Act as a translator between business stakeholders, product and our engineers, to ensure that technical, security and privacy considerations are represented in strategic discussions and business objectives are being met by our solutions.

• Work with others to align objectives, dependencies, and schedules across multiple teams to keep teams unblocked, and to ensure seamless projects execution.

• Collaborate with other Principal Engineers, through the Principal Engineers Forum, to share best practices, quality standards, address improvement areas, and ensure effective communication of information.

• Collaborate with security teams to monitor vulnerabilities, implement defences, and ensure compliance with security best practices.

• Collaborate with digital operations and support to ensure smooth BAU operations.

Excellence by Design

• Continuously discover, define, architect, deliver, and enable solutions that support program OKRs.

• Offer deep technical expertise, providing insights and guidance, ensuring solutions are secure, compliant, scalable, maintainable, and efficient.

• Advocate for the adoption of best practices, new technologies, automation, and continuous improvement initiatives in both technical and privacy domains.

• Foster a DevOps model of success by building a culture of shared responsibilities and transparency leading to higher quality and quicker delivery of outcomes.

• Stay updated on emerging technologies, industry trends, and best practices, and apply this knowledge to improve engineering processes and drive innovation within the organization.

• Ensure that privacy and security are an integral part of the system design, not merely layered on.

Coaching & Mentorship

• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior and mid-level engineers, facilitate knowledge sharing and taking an active role in supporting the development of the wider team and their careers. Foster a culture of excellence, innovation, and continuous learning within the engineering team.

• Act on Developer Experience (DX) survey findings and feedback from the engineering team members, to drive continuous improvement initiatives to increase the “Ease of Delivery” of the team.

People Management & Development 

• Lead, manage, develop, and coach a team of 20 contract engineering resources across 5 global locations

• Create a team environment that drives high engagement

• Support Pfizer's Diversity and Inclusion objectives, as applicable

Incident Management & Recovery

• Lead or assist in the response to security incidents, ensuring rapid containment, mitigation, and recovery.

• Lead troubleshooting during operational outages, guiding the team to diagnose and resolve issues quickly.

• Work towards system resilience and implement post-mortem analyses to identify root causes and prevent future incidents.

• Ensure that solutions are designed with data privacy considerations from the outset.

Qualifications and education requirements 

In order to fulfil the responsibilities listed above, we expect that you possess and demonstrate:

• Extensive experience with Salesforce Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud as a hands-on engineer in increasingly senior positions

• Extensive wider software engineering experience, with a focus on leading complex projects.

• Strong problem-solving and analytical abilities, with a keen attention to detail.

• A broad technical knowledge of digital pharmaceutical sciences platforms and best practices across both user interfaces and back-end systems, as a “jack of all trades”.

• Proven technical leadership skills, mentorship, with the ability to motivate and inspire team members and fellow engineers towards achieving common goals.

• Exceptional interpersonal skills, with the ability to communicate effectively in a matrix environment with geographically distributed resources, and establish strong partnerships with senior non-technical stakeholders, with a talent to explain complex topics simply.

• Ability to influence and work with cross-functional teams to deliver complex projects in accordance with broader strategies.

• Deep understanding of software development methodologies and best practices for implementing principles of privacy & security ‘by design’.

• Understanding of the implications, regulations, and best practices of data handling in the pharmaceutical industry.

• Understanding of the DevSecOps best practices that should be in place, driving an “Everything as Code instead of paperwork” mentality.

• Familiarity with the multiple policies, standards, systems, and organizations within the pharmaceutical industry, to minimize risk of challenges or duplication in implementation.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

• Minimum of 8 years’ experience with increasing responsibility delivering digital solutions, products, and services.

• Professional certifications in engineering leadership are a plus.

• Demonstrable experience operating in a DevOps environment.

• Proven capability handling large scale, enterprise software delivery in a global 24/7 environment.

At a technical level, we are looking for engineers with qualifications and expertise in the following areas:

• Experience driving and participating in technical discovery to architect and deliver solutions that meet program business objectives.

• Systems thinking experience demonstrated by architecting complex solutions that require integrating multiple solutions.

• Demonstrated hands-on experience using Salesforce Data Cloud, Marketing Cloud, AWS and Snowflake services to build real-life large-scaled solutions.

• Understanding of CI/CD practices, RESTful APIs, integration patterns, microservice patterns and other areas of interest to modern software development.

• Excellent experience with API-led development using Postman and Open API 3.0 is a must.

• Excellent experience with Agile team processes, including Scrum and Kanban delivery - we enjoy working with lean methods.

• Experience with the types of process problems that come when trying to build complex, new applications and comfortable when things are uncertain and require problem solving.

• Excellent experience estimating complex technical stories and breaking them down.

• Strong written and spoken English with excellent asynchronous collaboration and communication.

Candidate demonstrates a breadth of diverse leadership experiences and capabilities including: the ability to influence and collaborate with peers, develop and coach others, oversee and guide the work of other colleagues to achieve meaningful outcomes and create business impact.

NON-STANDARD WORK SCHEDULE, TRAVEL OR ENVIRONMENT REQUIREMENTS

This is a global role, with a vendor whose leadership is largely based in North America. Travel therefore may be required from time to time.  Attendance at meetings in the Eastern US timezone will be required.