Associate Director, Data Engineer
AstraZeneca7 days ago
Barcelona, SpainStaff+
Responsibilities
- Design, build, test, deploy, and maintain data and metadata pipelines for ingestion, processing, transformation, validation, enrichment, and publication.
- Deliver end-to-end data lifecycle solutions from source-system integration through FAIR data publication, scientific analysis, and downstream use.
- Integrate data from internal systems, laboratory applications and instruments, APIs, databases, and file-based sources.
- Build modular, configurable, reusable, reliable, scalable, and maintainable pipelines for multiple R&D projects.
- Implement data quality, validation, provenance, traceability, error-handling, monitoring, and observability controls.
- Develop supporting APIs, services, workflow components, and data infrastructure as required.
- Take solutions from prototype through production deployment, troubleshooting, maintenance, and continuous improvement.
- Apply software engineering practices including version control, automated testing, CI/CD, documentation, secure development, and controlled change management.
- Optimize pipelines for reliability, performance, scalability, maintainability, and cost efficiency.
- Collaborate with scientists, bioinformaticians, data engineers, architects, data-management specialists, stakeholders, and outsourced service providers.
- Support metadata structures, FAIR+T principles, data quality, and data-management standards.
- Identify opportunities to use automation and AI-enabled approaches in data-management and engineering workflows, and contribute to technical learning and knowledge sharing.
Requirements
- Strong experience designing, developing, deploying, and maintaining complex data pipelines or data-intensive software solutions.
- Strong hands-on Python programming skills and familiarity with other relevant programming languages.
- Practical experience with AWS services including S3, Lambda, Glue, Step Functions, RDS, CloudWatch, and IAM, or equivalent cloud technologies.
- Experience with relational databases, APIs, data integration, workflow orchestration, and data-processing frameworks.
- Experience taking pipelines from prototype into production, including deployment, monitoring, troubleshooting, lifecycle management, and continuous improvement.
- Strong understanding of data quality, validation, error handling, provenance, and traceability.
- Ability to design modular, reusable, configurable, and maintainable technical solutions.
- Experience with Git or other version control, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, documentation, and secure development.
- Practical knowledge of automation and AI-assisted development for pipeline development, testing, documentation, monitoring, and maintenance.
- Hands-on experience with coding agents such as Claude Code or Codex for pipeline prototyping, development, or testing.
- Preferred experience with AI agents, agent orchestration, agent frameworks, guardrails, Model Context Protocol, agent skills, and data-source or pipeline integration.
- Preferred experience with security, governance, privacy, responsible AI-agent use, bioinformatics, multi-omics, genomics, laboratory data, scientific workflows, or life-sciences research.
- Preferred experience with non-relational databases, containers, Kubernetes, infrastructure-as-code, hybrid cloud, large datasets, scientific computing, high-performance data processing, statistical or machine-learning techniques, regulated environments, mentoring, or technical delivery coordination.
Benefits
- In-office role in Barcelona, Spain, requiring at least three days per week on-site; remote or travel flexibility is not available.
Tech Stack
Categories
Data Engineering
About AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca is a global biopharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, manufactures, and commercializes prescription medicines for patients and healthcare systems. Its portfolio spans oncology, cardiovascular, renal and metabolism, respiratory and immunology, and rare diseases (expanded by the 2021 acquisition of Alexion). Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Cambridge, UK, it is a public company listed on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, generating revenue primarily from drug sales and partnerships.