Principal Engineer, R&D Platform

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and Med Tech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity.

R&D Product Development

Multi-Family R&D Product Development

People Leader

Jacksonville, Florida, United States of America

Johnson & Johnson is currently seeking a Principal Engineer, R&D Platform, to join our Vision Team located in Jacksonville, FL.

The Global Platform Principal Engineer is accountable for end-to-end product research, development, and launch of contact lens products. This role leads program management across multi-functional groups to deliver complex portfolios and ensure successful product introduction and lifecycle stewardship, employing both established and novel technologies with minimal supervision. This position defines and drives the development strategy to ensure feasibility, definition, clinical validation, quality, and efficacy throughout the product development lifecycle.

It emphasizes strong connections between contact lens manufacturing, product characteristics, and patient experience to establish robust design controls and lifecycle metrics. The Principal Engineer serves as a technical authority and actively influences R&D leadership to meet product development objectives, collaborating with Project Teams, Process Development, Regulatory, Clinical, Quality, Supply Chain, and Commercial functions to align on program goals and risk-based decisions.

The role also adheres to environmental policy and Credo-based decision-making, while promoting program governance and multi-functional collaboration across the enterprise.

• Lead highly complex R&D programs from discovery through launch, with explicit emphasis on program management, multi-functional governance, and milestone-based delivery.
• Conduct research of a highly complex nature where analysis of situations or data requires an evaluation of intangible variable factors.
• Contribute to the development of new principles and concepts and translate them into executable roadmaps and plans.
• Exercise independent judgment to design methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria for new assignments, prioritizing risk-based decisions and scalable solutions.
• Drive continuous improvement in the development of new or refined materials, processes, products, and scientific procedures across the product lifecycle.
• Act as an authoritative technical resource, providing direction and mentoring to teams within and across functions.
• Align efforts with predetermined long-range business strategies, including portfolio choices, potential acquisitions, and licensing decisions when applicable.
• Analyze data and complex situations involving tangible variables to arrive at innovative and actionable solutions.
• Modify methodologies to improve data quality, accuracy, and usefulness for decision-making.
• Make major contributions to scientific literature and conferences to advance platform leadership.
• Plan, discover, and develop programs, and originate, design, or direct investigations in areas assigned to the laboratory and related environments.
• Own the development and deployment of the technical and marketing claims roadmap to guarantee the product’s commercial success.
• Collaborate with Regulatory Affairs to prepare, and file regulatory submissions for the new product for the purposes of registration.
• Drive the IP strategy and the generation of new IP to ensure robust protection for the product and Platform.
• Perform other related duties as assigned by management.

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant Engineering field required.
liMaster or PhD in a related Engineering field preferred.

• Required experience:
  
  8+ years with a Bachelor’s degree, 5+ years with a Master’s degree, or…