HYBRID - Director of Data Engineering

HYBRID - DIRECTOR OF DATA ENGINEERING

Location; Carlsbad, CA (3 days on site)

JOB DESCRIPTION

The Director, Data Engineering will serve as a senior technical leader focused on advancing Ionis's Databricks platform and cloud-based data engineering to support analytics, AI, data science and automation. This role will oversee consulting resources, drive the adoption of modern engineering practices, and partner closely with data governance and analytics teams to ensure that Ionis's data infrastructure is trusted, scalable, and AI-ready. The Director will ensure that Ionis's data infrastructure supports Commercial launches, Clinical Trials, and Enterprise Systems (e.g., SAP).

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, automation, and optimization of data environments across development, test, and production (Databricks, Azure, Snowflake, ADF, AWS).
• Implement DevOps best practices for CI / CD, monitoring, cost optimization and ML Ops in Databricks to support advanced analytics and AI initiatives.
• Manage and coordinate external consulting resources to deliver high-quality engineering solutions by ensuring internal standards and sustainable knowledge transfer.
• Partner with data scientists, analysts, and IT teams to ensure reliable, scalable, and secure data platforms.
• Support Commercial product launches with scalable data pipelines and reporting infrastructure.
• Enable Clinical Trial data operations, ensuring timely, accurate, and compliant data flows.
• Integrate with Enterprise Systems (e.g., SAP, CRM, ERP) to unify and optimize data access across the organization.
• Drive adoption of modern engineering practices (infrastructure as code, containerization, testing frameworks).
• Establish standards and documentation for Databricks operations and data engineering workflows.
• Troubleshoot complex technical issues and serve as a subject matter expert for cloud-based data engineering.

Qualifications

Education

Additional Info