Specialist Software Engineer
About this opportunity
Career Category
Information Systems
Job Description
Specialist Software Engineer
Role Description
We are seeking an experienced Specialist Software Engineer to lead the design, development, deployment, and operation of scalable enterprise software solutions. This role combines full-stack development, cloud engineering, DevOps, application security, system reliability, and AI-enabled solution development.
The ideal candidate has strong hands-on experience with React, Vite, FastAPI, Python, TypeScript or JavaScript, APIs, microservices, AWS, containerization, CI/CD, DevSecOps, and production operations. The role will provide technical leadership, establish engineering standards, mentor developers, and collaborate with product, design, data, quality, cybersecurity, and platform teams.
Roles and Responsibilities
Lead the design, development, testing, deployment, and support of complex enterprise software solutions.
Own software initiatives from requirements and architecture through production deployment and operational support.
Manage technical scope, risks, dependencies, estimates, and delivery timelines.
Translate business requirements into scalable, secure, resilient, and maintainable solutions.
Develop responsive front-end applications using React, Vite, and TypeScript.
Develop back-end services, RESTful APIs, integrations, and data-access components using Python and FastAPI.
Build cloud-native solutions using microservices, serverless technologies, containers, APIs, and event-driven patterns.
Integrate applications with enterprise systems, identity platforms, databases, cloud services, and third-party solutions.
Develop AI-enabled applications using machine learning, Generative AI, LLMs, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation where appropriate.
Collaborate with data scientists and ML engineers to integrate predictive models and AI capabilities into applications.
Establish reusable design patterns, coding standards, engineering practices, and technical documentation.
Lead architecture, design, and code reviews to ensure quality, security, performance, and maintainability.
Apply secure software-development practices and integrate security testing into the software-development lifecycle.
Use tools such as Veracode, Snyk, SonarQube, Checkmarx, Fortify, or equivalent platforms to identify and remediate security and code-quality findings.
Implement unit, integration, regression, performance, and automated acceptance testing.
Develop CI/CD pipelines, automated deployments, infrastructure automation, and security quality gates.
Implement application monitoring, logging, tracing, alerting, and operational dashboards.
Improve application availability, scalability, reliability, performance, and disaster-recovery readiness.
Lead troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, incident response, and remediation of complex production issues.
Provide technical guidance, coaching, and mentorship to junior and mid-level engineers.
Collaborate with product managers, designers, QA, architects, DevOps, cybersecurity, data teams, and business stakeholders.
Participate in Agile planning, estimation, roadmap development, and delivery activities.
Evaluate emerging technologies based on business value, security, scalability, maintainability, and cost.
Participate in production support activities, including occasional off-hours support.
Basic Qualifications and Experience
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Engineering , Computer Science, Information Technology, Business, or a related field, with 8–12 years of relevant professional experience.
Must-Have Skills
Strong foundation in software architecture, object-oriented design, design patterns, and software-engineering best practices.
Advanced hands-on experience with full-stack software development.
Strong proficiency in Python, TypeScript or JavaScript, and SQL.
Strong proficiency in FastAPI, including API design, validation, asynchronous processing, authentication, testing, and production deployment.
Strong experience developing modern web applications using React and Vite.
Experience with front-end state management, routing, reusable components, responsive design, accessibility, and performance optimization.
Experience designing RESTful APIs, microservices, asynchronous integrations, and event-driven solutions.
Strong cloud-native development experience, with AWS preferred.
Experience with relevant AWS services such as Lambda, ECS, EKS, API Gateway, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, CloudWatch, EventBridge, and Step Functions.
Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, Git, CI/CD, automated testing, and production deployment.
Strong knowledge of secure software development, OWASP Top 10, authentication, authorization, RBAC, encryption, secrets management, and dependency security.
Hands-on experience with application-security and code-quality tools such as Veracode, Snyk, SonarQube, Checkmarx, Fortify, or equivalent platforms.
Experience integrating code, dependency, container, and security scanning into CI/CD pipelines.
Experience assessing and remediating security vulnerabilities and code-quality findings.
Experience designing highly available, scalable, fault-tolerant, and maintainable systems.
Experience with monitoring, logging, tracing, alerting, and production troubleshooting.
Experience leading technical designs, code reviews, and complex software deliveries.
Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and establish reusable engineering standards.
Strong Agile delivery, analytical, debugging, and problem-solving skills.
AI and Machine Learning Capabilities
Experience incorporating AI or machine learning capabilities into enterprise applications.
Understanding of model integration, model serving, APIs, and production deployment patterns.
Familiarity with frameworks such as Scikit- learn , TensorFlow, PyTorch, or equivalent technologies.
Experience developing Generative AI applications using LLMs, prompt engineering, embeddings, vector search, or RAG.
Understanding of AI security, privacy, evaluation, monitoring, governance, and responsible AI.
Good-to-Have Skills
Experience with AWS-native serverless and cloud-native architectures.
Experience with Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, AWS CDK, CloudFormation, or equivalent tools.
Experience with observability tools such as CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, or OpenTelemetry.
Experience with relational and NoSQL databases and performance optimization.
Experience with Kafka, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon SQS, or other asynchronous and streaming technologies.
Experience with MLOps platforms such as MLflow, SageMaker, Kubeflow, or Airflow.
Experience with Apache Spark, PySpark, Databricks, or other data-processing technologies.
Experience with threat modeling, penetration testing, software composition analysis, and software supply-chain security.
Experience implementing DevSecOps practices across web, API, cloud, and container environments.
Experience with disaster recovery, business continuity, and operational-readiness planning.
Experience within biotechnology, pharmaceutical, life sciences, manufacturing, or another regulated industry.
Preferred Certifications
AWS Certified Developer, Solutions Architect, or DevOps Engineer certification.
Relevant cloud, Kubernetes, software architecture, security, or DevSecOps certification.
Relevant AI, machine learning, or Generative AI certification.
Scaled Agile Framework certification.
Soft Skills
Excellent analytical, troubleshooting, and decision-making skills.
Strong verbal, written, presentation, and stakeholder-communication skills.
Ability to work effectively with global and virtual teams.
High degree of ownership, initiative, and self-motivation.
Ability to manage multiple priorities, dependencies, and delivery risks.
Strong leadership, mentoring, collaboration, and influencing skills.
Commitment to quality, security, reliability, and operational excellence.
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Job details
How this role compares
Computed from every other active Information Technology role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 1097 comparable Information Technology roles across 55 biopharma companies.
Salary context
143 of 1097 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)
Peers share this role's job function. This posting doesn't list a seniority level, so peers aren't narrowed by seniority either -- the range below may span more levels than usual.
Where these roles are based
Top locations among the 1097 comparable roles
+ 23 more countries
Seniority mix
612 of 1097 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
1 of 1097 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden
Similar opportunities
The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.
How we calculate "similar"
No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.
Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.
0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.