Associate Director, Technology and Scientific Computing

Associate Director, Technology and Scientific Computing

Job ID REQ-10031627

United Kingdom

Summary

Understands complex and critical business problems from a variety of stakeholders and business functions, formulates integrated analytical approaches to mine data sources, employs statistical methods and machine learning algorithms to solve unmet medical needs, discover actionable insights, and automate processes for reducing effort and time for repeated use. Manages the definition, implementation, and adherence to the overall data lifecycle of enterprise data from data acquisition or creation through enrichment, consumption, retention, and retirement, enabling the availability of useful, clean, and accurate data throughout its useful lifecycle. High agility to work across various business domains. Integrates business presentations, smart visualization tools, and contextual storytelling to translate findings back to business users with a clear impact. Independently sets strategy, manages budget, ensures appropriate staffing, and coordinates projects within the area supervised. If managing a team: empowers the team and provides guidance and coaching, with limited guidance from more senior managers.

About the Role

Our Development Team is guided by our purpose: to reimagine medicine to improve and extend people’s lives.

To do this, we are optimizing and strengthening our processes and ways of working.

We are investing in new technologies and building specific therapeutic area and platform depth and capabilities – all to bring our medicines to patients even faster.

We are seeking key talent, like you, to join us and help give people with disease and their families a brighter future to look forward to.

Apply today and welcome to where we thrive together!

The Role

This role is pivotal in leading the development and adoption of innovative tools and processes for clinical reporting on a cutting-edge, cloud-based platform. You will collaborate closely with stakeholders from statistical programming and biostatistics to pharmacometrics, facilitating the iterative design of new processes in clinical reporting. This includes supporting the development of open-source tools, with a focus on complex executions, for instance implementing novel statistical methods as well-documented and tested R packages.

Key Accountabilities:

• Develop New Ways of Working: lead discussions about adapting new ways of working to enable provenance, orchestration, versioning of data, outputs, and code from planning of deliverables through to submission.
• Matrix Leadership: work as part of an interdisciplinary team that ranges from current users, process engineers, platform development team, and an innovation team focused on the application of AI and automation.
• Lead Tool Development: develop technical tools such as packages and applications that enable clinical trial teams to design and analyze clinical trials.
• Agile Development Leadership: drive the agile development cycle, from gathering user requirements and prototyping to production release, demos, training, and support.
• Continuous Improvement: work with users to identify opportunities for continuous improvement and modernization of our tooling.
• Problem-solving Skills: demonstrated ability to lead the analysis of complex problems, identify potential solutions, and implement effective outcomes.
• Mentor Team Members: coach junior team members on technical topics and best practices, including R package development, agile development, and managing environments.
• Promote Open-Source Culture: foster a culture of continuous evolution and open-source development by engaging with external communities, contributing new packages/features, and undertaking maintenance and support activities.

Your experience:

• Strong interest in modern ways of working, including git, open source languages, and applying data science principles in a GxP setting.
• Proven experience in leading the development lifecycle of R packages from prototype to production standard.
• Understanding of regulatory requirements (e.g., GxP) and computer system validation principles.
• Current or former maintainer of an open source (R/Julia/Python) package implementing statistical methods.
• Experience as a statistical programmer or statistician.
• Previous experience in collaborating on open-source projects within the pharmaceutical sector, such as those associated with R Consortium, pharmaverse, openpharma, or openstatware.
• Deep understanding of good software development practices (e.g., containers, versioning, CICD, code review) and embedding these in team workflows.
• Proficiency with git and application of git flows.
• Solution-oriented mindset with a collaborative spirit.

Why Novartis: Helping people with disease and their families takes more than innovative science. It takes a community of smart, passionate people like you. Collaborating, supporting, and inspiring each other. Combining to achieve breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. Ready to create a brighter future together?

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: Novartis is committed to building an outstanding, inclusive work environment and diverse teams representative of the patients and communities we serve.