Director, Enterprise Architecture — Animal Health

Job Description

Our IT organization delivers efficient, reusable technology solutions that accelerate business outcomes. Within Global Technology, the Enterprise Architecture team serves as a critical strategic partner — connecting technology investments to measurable business results.

Our Animal Health division operates as a highly dynamic "company-within-a-company" — encompassing everything from pharmaceutical R&D and manufacturing to connected devices, precision livestock management, and companion animal wellness products. As AI and digital technology reshape every link in this value chain, we need strategic technology leadership that spans the full breadth of the business. We are seeking a director to lead Enterprise Architecture engagement for Animal Health, serving as a trusted enterprise technology advisor to Animal Health leadership and a strategic partner to business-facing IT partners across the division.

This is not a traditional architecture role. It is a strategic leadership position for someone who deeply understands the science, operations, and commercial realities of the Animal Health business, and who can connect divisional outcomes to enterprise capabilities, platforms, standards, and technology direction. The right candidate will help Animal Health leaders understand how enterprise technology investments — including AI, advanced analytics, and connected-product platforms — can accelerate growth, compress timelines, optimize operations, and unlock new capabilities, while ensuring those investments are grounded in enterprise strategy, responsible AI principles, and measurable outcomes.

Organizational Context:

This role is part of the Enterprise Architecture organization within Global Technology and leads Enterprise Architecture engagement for Animal Health. It operates as a trusted enterprise technology advisor to the Architecture Leadership Team and Animal Health senior leadership, and as a complementary strategic partner to business-facing IT partners. The role connects Animal Health priorities, outcomes, and capability needs to enterprise capabilities, platforms, standards, investments, and technology direction. It also represents Animal Health demand and strategic context within Enterprise Architecture so that enterprise decisions and capabilities better support divisional outcomes. Crucially, this role serves as the bridge to the Human Health side of the enterprise, ensuring that Animal Health technology decisions leverage broader enterprise scale and shared platforms were optimal, while preserving the agility the animal health market demands. The role advises, guides, and aligns where enterprise or cross-divisional implications exist, partnering with divisional architecture, product, domain, and delivery leaders who drive realization within Animal Health.

Key Responsibilities:

Trusted Enterprise Advisor to Animal Health Leadership

• Develop trusted relationships with Animal Health senior leadership and the Architecture Leadership Team, providing an enterprise technology perspective that connects divisional priorities to enterprise capabilities, platforms, standards, investments, and future technology direction.

• Advise Animal Health leaders on enterprise technology opportunities, dependencies, risks, tradeoffs, and cross-divisional implications that may influence divisional outcomes — with particular attention to synergies and shared investments with Human Health.

• Help Animal Health leaders understand how enterprise capabilities, shared platforms, and technology investments can accelerate business objectives while reducing duplication, risk, and long-term complexity.

• Bring visibility to enterprise implications and cross-divisional dependencies early enough to inform planning and investment discussions before choices are locked.

• Represent Animal Health priorities, demand signals, and capability needs in enterprise technology and architecture discussions so they shape enterprise strategy, platforms, and investments.

Accelerate Business Outcomes

• Engage Animal Health leadership early to understand material outcomes, future demand, and enterprise implications across the full value stream — R&D, manufacturing, supply chain, and commercial/sales & marketing — as well as emerging product lines such as connected devices and digital services.

• Connect divisional needs to enterprise capabilities, platforms, data, and shared dependencies — helping resolve enterprise barriers that could delay Animal Health outcomes.

• Drive AI acceleration across Animal Health: identify high-value use cases spanning drug development, manufacturing optimization, predictive supply chain, precision livestock management, and connected companion animal products — prioritizing by business impact and ensuring strategic alignment over fragmentation.

• Evaluate emerging technologies and industry trends (AI/ML, generative AI, IoT, connected devices, Cloud, SaaS, advanced analytics, modern data integration) and translate them into actionable enterprise strategies that serve Animal Health.

• Bring a total-cost-of-ownership and business-outcomes lens to investment decisions, ensuring choices are evidence-based, priority-aligned, and sustainable at scale.

Make Technology Decisions Fast, Transparent, and Durable

• Own the quality and traceability of enterprise architecture decisions affecting Animal Health — ensuring decisions, rationale, dependencies, implications, and outcomes are visible and reusable.

• Clarify which decisions require enterprise alignment and which require senior governance, providing constructive guidance rooted in business context and the unique speed requirements of the Animal Health market.

• Translate recurring enterprise decisions into standards, patterns, reference architectures, and self-service guidance — including responsible AI guardrails and connected-product architecture patterns.

• Drive connected, trusted enterprise architecture data that improves planning, decision intelligence, reuse, optimization, and self-service access to architecture knowledge.

Optimize Through Reuse, Standardization, and Simplification

• Create visibility into cross-divisional reuse, platform leverage, duplication, lifecycle risk, and technical debt opportunities — actively collaborating with Enterprise Architecture peers on the Human Health side to identify shared platforms and enterprise-wide synergies.

• Quantify enterprise value and implications in partnership with portfolio, finance, product, and architecture leaders.

• Help convert agreed opportunities into roadmaps with clear owners — measuring opportunity visibility, reuse, complexity reduction, and realized enterprise value.

• Balance enterprise standardization with the agility Animal Health requires as a "company-within-a-company," championing value-centric technology decisions prioritized by business outcomes.

Shape and Realize the Future of Technology

• Bring Animal Health future demand and market signals into enterprise technology foresight — shaping enterprise capability and platform direction where Animal Health needs have broader relevance.

• Maintain an active network of peer organizations, analysts, suppliers, and leading-edge sources in animal health, agriculture, connected devices, and life sciences technology — with particular attention to the evolving AI and IoT ecosystems.

• Advise Animal Health leaders on the implications and opportunities created by enterprise technology direction, connecting enterprise roadmaps to practical adoption paths.

• Translate external insights into practical recommendations that keep Animal Health technology strategy ahead of the curve.

Enterprise Architecture Leadership and Capability Building

• Lead Enterprise Architecture engagement for Animal Health, establishing clear priorities, accountability, and measurable outcomes aligned to the enterprise EA strategy.

• Develop and coach Enterprise Architecture talent supporting Animal Health, strengthening business acumen, strategic thinking, enterprise alignment, decision leadership, and domain depth.

• Represent Animal Health within Enterprise Architecture leadership forums and represent Enterprise Architecture perspectives within Animal Health leadership forums.

• Act as a senior delegate for Enterprise Architecture leadership in Animal Health-related planning, strategy, and governance discussions when required.

• Build succession depth for enterprise architecture leadership.

Required Skills

Deep Animal Health Domain Knowledge

• Thorough understanding of the end-to-end Animal Health value stream — from discovery and clinical development through manufacturing, supply chain, and commercial sales — including both pharmaceutical and physical product/connected device portfolios.

• Working knowledge of relevant regulations (e.g., USDA, FDA CVM, EPA, GxP) and emerging regulatory expectations around data and AI in the life sciences and agricultural space.

• Familiarity with commercial and operational systems alongside scientific computing and R&D platforms at a strategic level.

AI & Advanced Analytics Acumen

• Strong understanding of how AI/ML and generative AI are being applied across end-to-end business operations — with a clear-eyed view of where they deliver real value versus where they remain aspirational.

• Ability to bridge data scientists, business leaders, and technology teams, ensuring AI initiatives are framed around business problems and measured by business outcomes.

• Commitment to responsible AI practices: fairness, transparency, and regulatory compliance.

Strategic & Enterprise Thinking

• Proven ability to develop technology strategies that bridge business vision and execution, with a track record of driving adoption and measurable results.

• Enterprise-level thinking: uniquely capable of balancing the specific, agile needs of a "company-within-a-company" with the scale and synergy opportunities of the broader global enterprise.

• Experience navigating complex, matrixed organizations and influencing without direct authority. Comfortable in ambiguity.

Stakeholder Leadership & Communication

• Outstanding communication skills — able to distill complex technology concepts into compelling narratives for executive, business, and technical audiences.

• Skilled in evidence-based decision-making through structured analysis and persuasive storytelling.

• Demonstrated ability to build trusted advisory relationships with senior leaders through business acumen, follow-through, and sound judgment.

Modern Technology Fluency

• Strong grasp of Cloud, SaaS, AI/ML, IoT, data platforms, and modern integration patterns in complex, multi-domain environments.

• Ability to evaluate vendor platforms and emerging technologies with a critical, business-first lens — assessing fit, risk, scalability, and TCO.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Security, or a related field.

• 15+ years in technology strategy, enterprise architecture, digital transformation, or related leadership roles — ideally with significant exposure to Animal Health, Agriculture, Life Sciences, or end-to-end pharmaceutical operations.

• Self-directed leader who independently identifies needs, fills strategic gaps, and drives results with minimal direction.

• Effectively leverages of thought and perspective to strengthen strategies and outcomes.

• Bachelor's or master's degree in information science, Computer Science, Life Sciences, Business Administration, or a related field.

Required Skills:

Business Acumen, Business Acumen, Business Alignment, Business Decisions, Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA), Business Informatics, Business Models, Business Process Modeling, Data Modeling, Emerging Technologies, Enterprise Leadership, Influencing Skills, Influencing Without Authority, Information Technology Architecture, Partner Relationship Management (PRM), Platform Design, Platform Development, Platform Management, Process Alignment, Process Simplification, Requirements Management, Situational Leadership, Solution Architecture, Stakeholder Relationship Management, Strategic Alignment {+ 1 more}

Preferred Skills:

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The salary range for this role is

$173,200.00 - $272,600.00

This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs.

The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits.  Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits.

You can apply for this role through https://jobs.merck.com/us/en (or via the Workday Jobs Hub if you are a current employee). The application deadline for this position is stated on this posting.

San Francisco Residents Only: We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance

Los Angeles Residents Only: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance

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Employee Status:

Regular

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Flexible Work Arrangements:

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Job Posting End Date:

09/14/2026

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