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, def