Technical Lead, External and Scientific Engagement

Job Description

We are looking for a Technical Lead to shape and deliver the platforms that power our External and Scientific Engagement (ESE) products. These products provide field medical teams and the wider scientific community with trusted scientific insights, clinical-study information, and medical knowledge. The ideal candidate brings deep software development and cloud computing experience and can translate that expertise into reliable, high-value products. 

This position turns complex scientific and clinical-study information into trusted solutions. You will guide the ingestion, transformation, and harmonization of internal and external information, ensuring it meets quality and regulatory expectations and is delivered through secure, cloud-native applications that accelerate access to scientific knowledge.  You will lead software engineers, own technical direction for your product area, and serve as a senior technical partner to business, product, and architecture stakeholders.

Success in this position means establishing a clear technical direction, enabling engineers to deliver secure and sustainable solutions, improving the product area’s technology landscape, and building confidence among product, architecture, business, and vendor partners.

The ESE Product Line partners with the Value & Implementation organization to advance technologies that support medical affairs and outcomes research.  It also collaborates with the Scientific Communications & Information Sciences organization to deliver modern solutions that provide trusted scientific and medical information to healthcare providers and patients worldwide. The ESE Product Line is part of the Digital Development Capabilities Value Team within the Clinical Development and Digital Solutions organization.

 

Must haves

• Proven technical leadership: strong problem-solving skills, mentoring engineers, owning the technical strategy and direction of a product
• Ability to work independently in ambiguous situations, establish priorities, and provide clear direction to others
• Broad experience across frontend, backend, and database technologies, with the ability to guide architecture and technology trade-offs across languages and frameworks such as React, Python / FastAPI, Java / Spring Boot, Node.js / TypeScript, and Databricks
• Extensive hands-on software development and prototyping experience, with a track record of designing and delivering high-quality technical solutions
• Expertise in cloud computing technologies and platforms including AWS and Azure, including architecting cloud-native solutions
• Experience applying modern data-platform and AI/ML concepts and technologies to the design and delivery of software solutions

• Experience working in a cross-functional product team with product, design, architecture, and engineering partners

• Experience governing strategic vendors and software partners and leading delivery across globally distributed engineering teams

Nice to haves

• Experience designing and improving deployment practices and Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) processes that support reliable, repeatable software delivery
• Experience in the pharmaceutical industry or another highly regulated environment
• Solid understanding of System Development Lifecycle (SDLC) methodologies
• Experience with GxP validation in regulated environments, particularly Good Clinical Practice (GCP)

Your responsibilities

• Own the technical vision and roadmap for your product area in partnership with product managers and architecture leaders, ensuring technical priorities support product goals and enterprise direction
• Lead engineers in delivering secure, modern solutions, contributing directly to solution design and prototyping when needed
• Assess current solutions and develop modernization roadmaps that prioritize business value, improve sustainability, and reduce technical risk
• Ensure product solutions align with experimentation, human-centered design, and agile principles
• Partner with product managers to translate business needs into actionable technical requirements and inform sprint planning with feasibility and trade-off analysis
• Set clear technical, quality, and delivery expectations for vendors and partners, and hold them accountable for meeting those standards
• Lead through influence, creating alignment within the team and building trusted partnerships with business stakeholders
• Mentor engineers in technical design and solution architecture to strengthen the team’s long-term capability

What we offer

• Exciting work in a great team, global projects, international environment
• Opportunity to learn and grow professionally within the company globally
• Hybrid working model, flexible role pattern
• Competitive salary & incentive pay
• Pension and health insurance contributions
• Internal reward system and referral scheme
• 5 weeks annual leave, 5 sick days, 15 days of certified sick leave paid above statutory requirements annually, 40 paid hours annually for volunteering activities, 12 weeks of parental contribution
• Cafeteria for tax free benefits according to your choice (meal vouchers, sport, culture, health, travel, etc.), Multisport Card
• Vodafone, Raiffeisen Bank, Foodora, and discount programmes
• Up-to-date laptop and iPhone
• Parking in the garage, showers, refreshments, massage chairs, library, music corner

Ready to take up the challenge? Apply now! Know anybody who might be interested? Refer this job!

Additional location(s) Compensation Information:

Required Skills:

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Application Infrastructure, Clinical Development, Computer Science, Data Engineering, Data Governance, Data Visualization, Design Applications, Enterprise Data, Project Delivery, Rapid Prototyping, Secure Deployment, Software Configurations, Software Development, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Solution Architecture, SQL Optimization, System Designs, System Integration, Technical Leadership, Terraform (Software), Testing

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

25%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

1st - Day

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

11/1/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.