Director, IT Scientific Solutions Architect

The Director, IT Scientific Solutions Architect leads the architectural vision and direction for R&D digital platforms, ensuring the design and evolution of cloud native, interoperable, and scalable technology ecosystems that enable modern scientific research.

This role serves as the architectural authority for Research IT, setting standards, defining future state architectures, and governing solution design across lab systems, data platforms, automation, and analytics. The Director is accountable for ensuring that R&D solutions are secure, modular, API driven, and reusable, accelerating digital delivery while reducing long term technical debt across the Research portfolio.
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Key Responsibilities
Architectural Leadership & Strategy
• Lead and own the target state architecture for R&D digital platforms, establishing clear architectural direction aligned with Research and enterprise IT strategy.
• Define and govern enterprise grade architecture standards, reference architectures, and design principles for Research solutions.
• Ensure architectural decisions support scalability, interoperability, and long term sustainability across scientific domains.

Platform & Integration Architecture
• Lead the design of integration patterns across ELN, LIMS, SDMS, lab automation/robotics, data platforms, and analytics ecosystems.
• Establish and enforce use of APIs, event driven architectures, and standardized interfaces to enable reuse and composability.
• Ensure platforms and integrations are designed to support data and compute intensive research workloads.

Cloud & Engineering Alignment
• Provide architectural leadership to ensure Research platforms are built on approved enterprise cloud services and platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure).
• Set direction for the use of managed services, storage, compute, and integration technologies, balancing agility, cost, and compliance.
• Ensure architectural designs meet expectations for availability, reliability, performance, and resilience.
Solution Governance & Delivery Oversight
• Govern solution architecture across the Research IT portfolio, reviewing and approving designs to ensure alignment with target architectures.
• Translate architectural vision into clear, actionable solution patterns and implementation guidance for delivery teams.
• Provide executive level architectural guidance during complex implementations, migrations, and integrations.

Data Architecture, Governance & Security
• Lead architectural alignment with data strategy, ensuring solutions support data products, harmonized data models, metadata, and lineage.
• Ensure architectures integrate cleanly with enterprise data governance and harmonization capabilities.
• Accountable for ensuring solutions meet security, privacy, and regulatory (GxP/GMP) requirements in collaboration with security and compliance teams.

Standards, Reuse & Technical Debt Reduction
• Establish and drive adoption of reusable architectural components and integration patterns across Research IT.
• Identify systemic architectural risks and lead remediation of technical debt that limits scalability, interoperability, or compliance.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and platforms, setting architectural direction for adoption where appropriate.

Stakeholder & Vendor Leadership
• Serve as the primary architectural leader and advisor to Product Owners, Scientific Leaders, and Research IT leadership.
• Provide architectural leadership for RFPs, vendor evaluations, and strategic sourcing decisions.
• Hold vendors accountable to architectural standards and ensure proposed solutions align with Research and enterprise direction.

Role Impact
This Director role:
• Establishes a cohesive, cloud native, and interoperable Research technology architecture.
• Accelerates digital innovation while reducing architectural fragmentation and technical debt.
• Enables Research teams to scale data, automation, and analytics capabilities with confidence.
• Ensures every R&D technology investment advances the organization toward its future state digital research vision.

We are a company committed to creating diverse and inclusive environments where people can bring their full, authentic selves to work every day. We are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer that believes everyone matters. Qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment regardless of their race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, marital status, national origin, ancestry, genetic factors, age, disability, protected veteran status, military or uniformed service member status, or any other status or characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or recruiting process, please send a request to HR@insightglobal.com.To learn more about how we collect, keep, and process your private information, please review Insight Global's Workforce Privacy Policy: https://insightglobal.com/workforce-privacy-policy/.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field.
• 10+ years of experience in solution architecture, platform engineering, or enterprise systems design in complex environments.
• Demonstrated experience leading architecture across multiple platforms and portfolios, not just individual solutions.
• Deep expertise in cloud platforms (AWS/Azure), APIs, integration architectures, and data platforms.
• Proven ability to operate with strategic, executive level influence in matrixed organizations.

• Experience in pharmaceutical, biotech, or research environments, including ELN, LIMS, SDMS, or lab automation.
• Strong understanding of data governance, metadata, lineage, and regulatory compliance.
• Experience with microservices, event driven architectures, and DevOps practices.
• Executive level communication skills with the ability to influence technical and non technical leaders

Benefit packages for this role will start on the 1st day of employment and include medical, dental, and vision insurance, as well as HSA, FSA, and DCFSA account options, and 401k retirement account access with employer matching. Employees in this role are also entitled to paid sick leave and/or other paid time off as provided by applicable law.