Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture — Research & Development

Responsibilities

• Develop trusted relationships with R&D senior leadership and the Architecture Leadership Team to connect divisional priorities to enterprise capabilities, platforms, standards, investments, and technology direction.
• Advise on enterprise technology opportunities, dependencies, risks, tradeoffs, and cross-divisional implications.
• Help R&D leaders accelerate objectives using enterprise capabilities and shared platforms while reducing duplication, risk, and complexity.
• Bring visibility to enterprise implications and cross-divisional dependencies early to inform planning and investment discussions.
• Represent R&D priorities, demand signals, and capability needs in enterprise technology and architecture discussions.
• Engage R&D leadership early across discovery, lab operations, preclinical, clinical development, regulatory, pharmacovigilance, and clinical supplies manufacturing.
• Drive AI acceleration: identify high-value use cases, prioritize by business impact, and ensure strategic alignment.
• Evaluate emerging technologies (AI/ML, generative AI, Cloud/SaaS, advanced analytics, modern data integration) and translate them into enterprise strategies.
• Apply total-cost-of-ownership and business-outcomes lens to investments.
• Own quality/traceability of enterprise architecture decisions affecting R&D; ensure rationale and outcomes are visible and reusable.
• Translate decisions into standards, patterns, reference architectures, self-service guidance, and responsible AI guardrails.
• Optimize through reuse/standardization/simplification; quantify value and translate opportunities into roadmaps with owners.
• Bring future demand and market signals into enterprise technology foresight; maintain pharma/life sciences technology network; translate external insights into practical recommendations.
• Lead R&D Enterprise Architecture engagement; establish priorities, accountability, measurable outcomes; develop/coach EA talent and build succession depth.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Security, or related field.
• 15+ years in technology strategy, enterprise architecture, digital transformation, or related leadership roles; ideally with pharmaceutical/biotech/life sciences R&D exposure.
• Self-directed leader who identifies needs and drives results with minimal direction.
• Demonstrated ability to lead teams, develop talent, and build succession depth.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Information Science, Computer Science, Bioinformatics, Life Sciences, or related field.

• Deep end-to-end pharmaceutical R&D domain knowledge; understanding of 21 CFR Part 11, GxP, CSV.
• Strong AI/ML and generative AI acumen; bridge data scientists, business leaders, and technology teams; responsible AI (fairness, transparency, compliance).
• Strategic/enterprise thinking; influencing without authority; navigating matrix organizations.
• Exceptional communication and evidence-based decision-making.
• Fluency in Cloud, SaaS, data platforms, and modern integration; evaluate vendors using fit/risk/scalability/TCO.