Director, Principal Software Engineer - Strategic Engineering

Use Your Power for Purpose

Technology impacts everything we do. Pfizer’s digital and ‘data first’ strategy is dedicated to implementing innovative and impactful technology solutions across all functions, from research to manufacturing. Whether you are digitizing drug discovery and development, identifying solutions, or making our work easier and faster, you will be making a significant difference to countless lives. By focusing on these advancements, you contribute to a future where technology enhances every aspect of our operations, ultimately benefiting patients worldwide.

What You Will Achieve

In this role, you will focus on code quality, architecture decisions, and reliable delivery while leveraging AI tools to enhance productivity. You will verify and review AI-generated code to ensure it meets our quality standards.

You will be bridging the gap between building products and solving real business problems through rapid solution delivery and deep domain expertise. As part of the discovery-to-scale pipeline, you will identify recurring patterns, and lead validated solutions generalization into enterprise capabilities.

This role encompasses organization-wide technical strategy and architectural direction. You will define strategic direction and be accountable for outcomes, shape organizational practices and maintain external industry visibility. You will handle organizational-scale complexity creating clarity from chaos.

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES

• Forward-Deployed Pod Leadership: Lead a forward-deployed pod of engineers and product owners responsible for creating quick, high-quality applications supporting ELT and ELT-1 initiatives

• Delivery: Drive delivery of the most critical technical initiatives, establish engineering delivery practices across the team, and be the technical authority on high-stakes projects

• People: Develop technical leaders, shape engineering talent strategy, and build high-performing engineering teams

• Business: Shape technology-driven strategy, represent technical perspective at executive level, and be recognized as a bridge between engineering and business

• AI: Design AI-augmented engineering workflows for your area, evaluate new AI tools, train engineers on effective AI usage, and balance speed with verification

• Reliability: Establish SLOs/SLIs across teams, build resilient systems, lead reliability initiatives for your area, mentor engineers on reliability practices, and drive reliability culture

• Documentation: Establish documentation standards across teams in your area, build knowledge management systems, and mentor engineers on effective technical writing

• Process: Drive process efficiency within your team, coordinate cross-functional technical work, and lead retrospectives

• Executive Communication: Present complex technical solutions to senior leadership and executive audiences in a clear, compelling way

• Community & Mentorship: Participate as a leader in guild events and serve as an active leader in the mentorship program

ROLE BEHAVIOURS

• Don't Lose Your Curiosity: Shapes organizational culture around curiosity and continuous learning; sponsors experimental initiatives across the organization; recognized externally as a thought leader in problem discovery; influences industry practices around innovation and exploration

• Own the Outcome: Defines organizational accountability standards focused on business impact; shapes industry practices around outcome ownership in the AI era; sponsors transformational initiatives with full outcome accountability; recognized externally for ownership culture leadership

• Be Polymath Oriented: Champions cross-disciplinary learning; creates holistic solutions spanning technical and business domains; embodies the Renaissance Developer ideal; translates specialized knowledge into accessible explanations; thinks like a business insider

• Communicate with Precision: Creates spec-driven development practices; mentors others on precise communication; spans C-level executives to frontline workers; drives clarity as a core value across their function; represents the organization externally

• Think in Systems: Shapes systems design practices across their function; conducts chaos engineering experiments; influences cross-team architecture decisions; creates clarity from complexity; bridges technical systems with business processes

EXPERT-LEVEL SKILLS

• Business Immersion: You are a recognized thought leader. You influence strategy across the business, exemplify the business immersion mindset that defines engineering, and shape how engineering engages with the business.

• Data Integration: You define data integration patterns and best practices. You architect large-scale data flows, solve the most complex integration challenges, and are the authority on enterprise data integration.

• Full-Stack Development: You work comfortably in any language and rapidly acquire new skills as needed. You deliver production solutions in days not months, shape full-stack practices and exemplify polymathic engineering.

• Multi-Audience Communication: You shape communication practices. You represent engineering externally, communicate at board and executive level, and are recognized as an exceptional communicator who bridges any audience gap.

• Problem Discovery: You shape approaches to problem discovery. You are recognized for transforming ambiguous situations into clear opportunities, influence how teams engage with business problems, and are the go-to person for the most undefined challenges.

• Rapid Prototyping & Validation: You shape culture around rapid validation and iterative delivery. You are recognized for transformative fast delivery, define standards for prototype-to-production, and exemplify the "deliver in days" mindset.

• Stakeholder Management: You shape stakeholder practices. You manage executive relationships, represent engineering at the highest levels, and are recognized for exceptional stakeholder partnerships.

• Team Collaboration: You create collaborative culture. You transform dysfunctional team dynamics, are recognized for building exceptional teams, and mentor others on collaboration excellence.

PRACTITIONER-LEVEL SKILLS

• AI Evaluation & Verification: You lead AI governance initiatives across teams in your area, create evaluation standards and checklists, and train engineers on rigorous AI verification. You design review processes for AI-assisted work.

• AI Literacy: You guide AI adoption decisions across teams in your area, assess AI risks and benefits systematically, and train engineers on responsible AI usage. You design human-in-the-loop workflows.

• AI-Augmented Development: You optimize AI tool usage across teams in your area, train engineers on AI-augmented workflows, evaluate new AI development tools, and establish practices that balance AI speed with verification rigor.

• Architecture & Design: You design complex multi-component systems end-to-end, evaluate architectural options for large initiatives across teams, guide technical decisions for your area, and mentor engineers on architecture. You balance elegance with delivery needs.

• Code Quality & Review: You establish and enforce quality standards across teams in your area. You mentor engineers on effective code review, ensure verification depth for AI-assisted development, and drive testing strategies.

• Developer Experience: You lead developer experience initiatives across teams in your area. You design comprehensive self-service platforms, establish DX metrics, conduct systematic user research, and mentor engineers on platform-as-product thinking.

• Knowledge Management: You lead knowledge management initiatives across teams in your area, create knowledge systems and taxonomies, establish practices that make institutional knowledge persistent, and mentor others on knowledge sharing.

• Pattern Generalization: You lead pattern generalization initiatives across teams, define criteria for when to generalize vs keep custom. You mentor engineers on abstraction design.

• Service Management: You lead service management practices for multiple services across teams, optimize service portfolios for your area, balance service investments, and train engineers on service-oriented thinking.

• Site Reliability Engineering: You define reliability standards across teams in your area, drive post-incident improvements systematically, design capacity planning processes, and mentor engineers on SRE practices.

• Technical Writing: You define documentation standards across teams in your area, create documentation systems and templates, train engineers on spec-driven development, and ensure documentation quality across projects.

WORKING-LEVEL SKILLS

• Cloud Platforms: You design cloud-native solutions, manage infrastructure as code, implement security best practices, and make informed service selections. You troubleshoot cloud-specific issues.

• Data Modeling: You create efficient data models that balance normalization with query performance. You optimize queries, handle schema migrations safely, and choose appropriate storage technologies.

• DevOps & CI/CD: You build complete CI/CD pipelines end-to-end, manage infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation), implement monitoring, and design deployment strategies for your services.

• Lean Thinking & Flow: You optimize team processes systematically, measure and improve cycle time, remove bottlenecks proactively, and deliver rapidly while maintaining quality.

• Technical Debt Management: You prioritize debt systematically based on risk and impact, balance debt reduction with feature work, and make pragmatic trade-offs. You know when to take on debt intentionally.

• Time Management & Deep Work: You protect focused time for complex work, balance multiple priorities without dropping balls, minimize context switching, and help others understand your capacity.

Here Is What You Need (Minimum Requirements)

• Applicant must have a bachelor's degree, in Computer Science, Engineering or related field preferred, with at least 8 years of​ experience; OR a master's degree with at least 7 years of experience; OR​ a PhD with 5+ years of experience​
• Demonstrated track record of having personally created applications that are actively used with senior leadership (ELT / ELT-1), with the ability to present complex technical solutions to executive audiences
• 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.

PHYSICAL/MENTAL REQUIREMENTS

Extended Laptop and Desk time throughout the workday

NON-STANDARD WORK SCHEDULE, TRAVEL OR ENVIRONMENT REQUIREMENTS

25% required travel

Work Location Assignment: Hybrid

Last Date to Apply: October 16, 2026

The annual base salary for this position ranges from $176,600.00 to $294,300.00. In addition, this position is eligible for participation in Pfizer’s Global Performance Plan with a bonus target of 20.0% of the base salary and eligibility to participate in our share based long term incentive program. We offer comprehensive and generous benefits and programs to help our colleagues lead healthy lives and to support each of life’s moments. Benefits offered include a 401(k) plan with Pfizer Matching Contributions and an additional Pfizer Retirement Savings Contribution, paid vacation, holiday and personal days, paid caregiver/parental and medical leave, and health benefits to include medical, prescription drug, dental and vision coverage. Learn more at Pfizer Candidate Site – U.S. Benefits | (uscandidates.mypfizerbenefits.com). Pfizer compensation structures and benefit packages are aligned based on the location of hire. The United States salary range provided does not apply to Tampa, FL or any location outside of the United States.

This role is posted in multiple locations. If you are applying for the role in an secondary job posting location where pay transparency regulations apply, your Talent Advisor will share the local pay information with you during the first interview.

Relocation assistance may be available based on business needs and/or eligibility.

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.

Sunshine Act

Pfizer reports payments and other transfers of value to health care providers as required by federal and state transparency laws and implementing regulations. These laws and regulations require Pfizer to provide government agencies with information such as a health care provider’s name, address and the type of payments or other value received, generally for public disclosure. Subject to further legal review and statutory or regulatory clarification, which Pfizer intends to pursue, reimbursement of recruiting expenses for licensed physicians may constitute a reportable transfer of value under the federal transparency law commonly known as the Sunshine Act. Therefore, if you are a licensed physician who incurs recruiting expenses as a result of interviewing with Pfizer that we pay or reimburse, your name, address and the amount of payments made currently will be reported to the government. If you have questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact your Talent Acquisition representative.

EEO & Employment Eligibility

Pfizer is committed to equal opportunity in the terms and conditions of employment for all employees and job applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity or gender expression, national origin, disability or veteran status. Pfizer also complies with all applicable national, state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements of the Immigration and Nationality Act and IRCA. Pfizer is an E-Verify employer. This position requires permanent work authorization in the United States.

Pfizer endeavors to make www.pfizer.com/careers accessible to all users. If you would like to contact us regarding the accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process and/or interviewing, please email [email protected]. This is to be used solely for accommodation requests with respect to the accessibility of our website, online application process and/or interviewing. Requests for any other reason will not be returned.

To learn more about acceptable and prohibited uses of AI during the recruitment process, please review our candidate AI-use guidelines available on Pfizer Careers.

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