Director, Principal Engineer, Developer Surfaces

Pfizer is seeking a technical leader to set the technical direction, architecture, and delivery of Spark Pro’s desktop, web, and MCP developer surfaces. The role coordinates experienced engineers across surfaces, guides secure and privacy-first engineering, and improves developer experience and delivery quality through technical leadership and collaboration.

Responsibilities:

• A normal work week consists of leading one or more teams of engineers to deliver and implement technical solutions, following your design approach to meet your assigned program objectives and KPIs. You will also collaborate closely and often with your program lead, Digital Lead, and Product Owners, to ensure that technical decisions and their implementation align with broader strategic priorities
• You represent engineering in program and stakeholder meetings, as such you’ll need to be able to think on your feet: provide consultation, identify risks based on a variety of factors, and rely on your past experiences to identify potential solutions and develop ballpark estimates
• In many situations you will be working with technology that is new to Pfizer and requires you to learn quickly, be able to read and understand documentation, and architect robust and scalable solutions that align with our business objectives
• Using influence more than authority, you will lead teams of engineers on the implementation of the solution. Individual members of the team are responsible for delivering on their commitments, but the team supports each other. The team pride themselves on the quality of their code, our delivery practices and breadth of our test coverage. You will be expected to document your work
• Serve as the top technical authority across the developer surfaces — Mac, Windows, web, and MCP — making decisions on technology choices, design approaches, solution architecture and implementation
• Lead and oversee the entire lifecycle excellence of engineering projects, ensuring alignment with architectural vision and adherence to best practices
• Responsible for maintaining good code quality by promoting and ensuring secure code hygiene
• Responsible for guiding the correct configuration of SaaS solutions to ensure security and compliance
• Build a team able to manage change. Take appropriate risks to achieve the desired results, balancing risks to stability and current norms versus the need for constant change, improvement, and simplification
• Facilitate the conversation between Enterprise Architects, Business Architects, Vendors and Developers, by providing technical clarity on solution(s) to build and code to write, move content from ideation into delivery to move from concept to reality
• Act asa translator between business stakeholders and technical engineers, to ensure that technical, security and privacy considerations are represented in strategic discussions and business objectives are being met by our solutions
• Align objectives, dependencies, and schedules across multiple teams to keep teams unblocked, and to ensure seamless projects execution
• Collaborate with other Principal Engineers, and through the Principal Engineers Forum, to share best practices, quality standards, address improvement areas, and ensure effective communication of information
• Collaborate with security teams to monitor vulnerabilities, implement defences, and ensure compliance with security best practices
• Collaborate with digital operations and support to ensure smooth BAU operations
• Continuously discover, define, architect, deliver, and enable solutions that support program OKRs
• Offer deep technical expertise, providing insights and guidance, ensuring solutions are secure, compliant, scalable, maintainable, and efficient
• Advocate for the adoption of best practices, new technologies, automation, and continuous improvement initiatives in both technical and privacy domains
• Foster a DevOps model of success by building a culture of shared responsibilities and transparency leading to higher quality and quicker delivery of outcomes
• Stay updated on emerging technologies, industry trends, and best practices, and apply this knowledge to improve engineering processes and drive innovation within the organization
• Ensure that privacy and security are an integral part of the system design, not merely layered on
• Participate in or lead code reviews, where applicable
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior and mid-level engineers, facilitate knowledge sharing and taking an active role in supporting the development of the wider team and their careers. Foster a culture of excellence, innovation, and continuous learning within the engineering team
• Act on Developer Experience (DX) survey findings and feedback from the engineering team members, to drive continuous improvement initiatives to increase the “Ease of Delivery” of the team
• This role has no direct reports — you lead through influence, setting technical direction for the engineers who already own each surface
• Mentor and coach engineers across each surface, and build consensus among strong, independent contributors
• Support Pfizer's Diversity and Inclusion objectives, as applicable
• Lead or assist in the response to security incidents, ensuring rapid containment, mitigation, and recovery
• Lead troubleshooting during operational outages, guiding the team to diagnose and resolve issues quickly
• Work towards system resilience and implement post-mortem analyses to identify root causes and prevent future incidents
• Ensure that solutions are designed with data privacy considerations from the outset

Requirements:

• Extensive experience in software engineering, with a focus on leading complex projects
• Deep technical expertise from a well-documented background as a senior-level engineer
• Strong problem-solving and analytical abilities, with a keen attention to detail
• A broad technical knowledge across frontend, desktop, and backend systems — comfortable across the full stack while leaning primarily frontend, as a genuine full-stack generalist
• Proven technical leadership skills, mentorship, with the ability to motivate and inspire team members and fellow engineers towards achieving common goals
• Exceptional interpersonal skills, with the ability to communicate effectively in a matrix environment with geographically distributed resources, and establish strong partnerships with senior non-technical stakeholders, with a talent to explain complex topics simply
• Ability to influence and work with cross-functional teams to deliver complex projects in accordance with broader strategies
• Deep understanding of software development methodologies and best practices for implementing principles of privacy & security ‘by design'
• Understanding of the implications, regulations, and best practices of data handling in the pharmaceutical industry
• Understanding of the DevSecOps best practices that should be in place, driving an “Everything as Code instead of paperwork” mentality
• Familiarity with the multiple policies, standards, systems, and organizations within the pharmaceutical industry, to minimize risk of challenges or duplication in implementation
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
• Minimum of 8+ years' experience in frontend, desktop, or developer tooling engineering, with increasing responsibility delivering digital solutions, products, and services
• Demonstrable experience operating in a DevOps environment
• Proven capability handling large scale, enterprise software delivery in a global 24/7 environment
• Experience driving and participating in technical discovery to architect and deliver solutions that meet program business objectives
• Systems thinking experience demonstrated by architecting complex solutions that require integrating multiple solutions
• Demonstrated hands-on experience building and shipping developer-facing tools across more than one surface, ideally including Electron and Vue
• Understanding of CI/CD practices, RESTful APIs, integration patterns, microservice patterns and other areas of interest to modern software development
• Experience with the Model Context Protocol or comparable programmatic interface standards for AI agents and scripts
• Excellent experience with Agile team processes, including Scrum and Kanban delivery - we enjoy working with lean methods
• Experience with the types of process problems that come when trying to build complex, new applications and comfortable when things are uncertain and require problem solving
• Excellent experience estimating complex technical stories and breaking them down
• Strong written and spoken English with excellent asynchronous collaboration and communication
• Candidate demonstrates a breadth of diverse leadership experiences and capabilities including: the ability to influence and collaborate with peers, develop and coach others, oversee and guide the work of other colleagues to achieve meaningful outcomes and create business impact
• Candidates must be authorized to be employed in the U.S. by any employer
• U.S. work visa sponsorship (such as TN, O-1, H-1B, etc.) is not available for this role now or in the future
• This position requires permanent work authorization in the United States
• Professional certifications in engineering leadership