Principal Research Data Architect

Does it excite you to design the data foundation that powers AI‑driven drug discovery, and do you have deep experience turning fragmented scientific data into a governed, connected, reusable asset? If this sounds like you, and you are ready to take on a broad area of responsibilities, then you could be our new colleague.

This is a foundational role for the data‑driven future of Zealand Pharma. You will lead the team that builds, operates, and owns our research data foundation – the governed, semantically‑consistent data source that turns assay results, compound data and computed properties into a platform ready for analysis, machine learning and agentic workflows. You will set the vision and lead delivery across our legacy systems and cloud data platforms, partnering with research and IT, who own the underlying tech stack and data ingestion.

You will start with shared accountability alongside our data management and IT leads and grow into end‑to‑end ownership of the ecosystem as it matures. It is a rare mandate to shape a research data ecosystem from architecture through operation.

• Own the research data model – capturing scientific requirements as URS/FRS, directing configuration of new workflows with architecting new platforms working with implementation partners, and extending the model to new assay types
• Co‑lead the migration of legacy assay data into the future foundation, jointly accountable with our data management and IT leads
• Build the semantic layer for Zealand Pharma – adapting public ontologies and legacy controlled vocabularies into a governed vocabulary served across research, taking an adopt‑and‑extend approach rather than reinventing standards
• Own research data governance – data quality, lineage, metadata and reference data – as the trustworthy foundation for every downstream use
• Architect the research data lake and tactical knowledge graphs, delivering a "Zealand research context" as a substrate for analytics and AI
• Partner with our AI/ML, computational chemistry and agentic‑workflow leads as their data source supplier, and ensure governed data flows cleanly into analysis and visualization layers

You are a senior data architect who is equally comfortable in a scientific requirements workshop and in a platform design review. You think in standards and systems but are pragmatic about delivery, you set a clear vision and bring people with you, and you are motivated by building foundations others will rely on for years. You lead both directly and through influence and expertise, and you are energized rather than daunted by an ecosystem mid‑migration.

• Extensive experience designing research or scientific data architectures, ideally in drug discovery or life sciences
• Hands‑on experience with a scientific data platform (Benchling or comparable LIMS/ELN) and with requirements engineering (URS/FRS)
• Strong grounding in semantic technologies – ontologies, controlled vocabularies, knowledge graphs and F.A.I.R. / ontology‑based data management
• Experience with cloud lakehouse platforms (Databricks or equivalent) and data pipelines feeding analytics and AI/ML
• Demonstrated ownership of data governance – metadata, lineage, and reference/master data
• Proven ability to lead a team, set architecture direction, and drive delivery across vendors and cross‑functional stakeholders; familiarity with peptide or biologics data is an advantage

You will join the Research AI and Computational Sciences team within Discovery Research, at the heart of Zealand Pharma's ambition to combine peptide R&D expertise with a proprietary, AI/ML‑driven data platform. You will work daily with research scientists, IT,…