Sr. Director, Software Engineering, Digital for Research & CMC Development

Moderna is a biotechnology company developing innovative medicines and digital capabilities to advance scientific research and development. The Senior Director of Software Engineering will lead the engineering organization supporting Research and CMC Development, establish engineering standards and operating practices, and oversee full-stack application and integration engineering. The role will also build engineering leadership, partner across Product Management and Digital, and translate scientific needs into scalable digital solutions.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the evolution of the software engineering organization, establishing the leadership practices, operating model, engineering standards, and talent capabilities needed to support a growing Research and CMC Development digital portfolio
• Build and develop strong engineering leaders and senior technical contributors, enabling them to grow talent, delegate effectively, establish clear ownership, and operate at the right level of technical and organizational leadership
• Establish clear and consistent expectations for performance and career progression across the engineering organization, creating transparency around what strong performance looks like and how individuals grow in scope and impact
• Establish effective engineering operating rhythms and portfolio management practices that provide visibility into priorities, capacity, resource allocation, commitments, delivery health, dependencies, and risks, enabling informed tradeoffs when demand exceeds capacity
• Build a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and ownership in which teams deliver against commitments, leaders address systemic barriers to delivery and meaningful improvements to engineering practices and ways of working
• Provide senior oversight across custom full-stack application and integration engineering capacities supporting scientific and operational workflows
• Guide engineering strategy across commercial SaaS platforms, custom applications, scientific systems, enterprise platforms, and data products, promoting reusable APIs, services, integration patterns, and shared capabilities
• Drive simplification and sustainability across the technology landscape, ensuring applications and integrations leverage sound cloud architecture and engineering practices and are designed with reliability, observability, security, scalability, and operational support appropriate to their use
• Partner with Product Management to maintain alignment across product priorities, planned initiatives, engineering capacity, and existing commitments, enabling effective resource planning and informed portfolio tradeoffs
• Bring an engineering and systems perspective into product planning, helping teams understand how proposed solutions fit within the broader digital ecosystem and when software engineering capabilities are needed
• Develop engineering leaders who can partner effectively with Product leads, while working across D4RT leadership to strengthen Product–Engineering ways of working, shared planning, and decision-making
• Build strong partnerships across Digital, including Data Engineering, DevOps and Cybersecurity to navigate shared priorities and dependencies and effectively leverage enterprise platforms, data products, standards, and expertise
• Bring an informed engineering perspective to cross-Digital initiatives and enterprise technology decisions, understanding their implications for Research and CMC Development and constructively influencing approaches where needed
• Build trusted relationships with leaders and stakeholders across Research and CMC Development, developing a deep understanding of scientific workflows, development processes, data flows, and decision-making needs to inform engineering strategy and priorities
• Translate complex and sometimes ambiguous scientific needs into pragmatic, scalable digital solutions that improve scientific and operational outcomes

Requirements:

• 15+ years of progressive software engineering and technology experience, including 10+ years of engineering leadership experience with responsibility for engineering teams, leaders, and senior technical contributors
• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, including significant hands-on experience designing and delivering production software, with strong technical depth across modern software architecture, cloud-native engineering, full-stack development, APIs, distributed systems, and enterprise integration patterns
• 5+ years of modern cloud architecture and cloud-native engineering principles, with experience evaluate architectural approaches and tradeoffs across complex software environments
• 10+ years of leadership experience within biotechnology or biopharmaceutical organizations, with direct experience supporting scientific Research, CMC Development, Technical Development, Process Development, or closely related R&D functions
• Demonstrated experience leading and scaling software engineering organizations, including developing engineering leaders and senior technical talent, evolving engineering operating models and practices, and driving strong organizational performance
• Experience with scientific and laboratory technology ecosystems, including ELN, LIMS, SDMS, laboratory automation, scientific data platforms, modeling or analytical systems, or related capabilities
• Experience integrating commercial scientific SaaS platforms within complex biotechnology or biopharmaceutical technology environments
• Experience applying AI-enabled engineering tools and practices to improve software development productivity, quality, and scalability, with the technical fluency to guide engineering teams on effective and responsible adoption