Principal Data Engineer (Bangalore, Karnataka, IN)
About this opportunity
Department: Enterprise AI (EAI), Global Business Services, Enterprise IT & Quality
Location: Bangalore, India
Your impact begins here
As Principal Data Engineer, you will be the technical lead for the AIRE data engineering, design and delivery teams, helping strategize, build & enable the data foundations that Novo’s commercial, global manufacturing, supply chain and corporate functions would need. You will combine deep engineering expertise with business understanding to shape requirements, guide teams and vendors, and raise the bar for data quality, governance and engineering practices. Your work gives AI, analytics and business teams data they can trust and act on today.
What you’ll bring
You are a hands-on engineering leader, as comfortable reviewing code as shaping a strategic data foundational capability roadmap with business leaders. You will bring:
Master’s degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering or a related field.
10+ years of experience in data engineering, data architecture and data product development, designing and delivering large-scale, complex data initiatives.
Strong hands-on expertise in AWS, Snowflake, dbt, Databricks, Python, SQL and GitHub Enterprise or Azure DevOps.
Deep expertise in ETL/ELT design, data modelling, data warehousing and data lakes, and streaming technologies such as Kafka and Event Hubs.
A strong DataOps and DevOps background, including Git, CI/CD pipelines, Docker and Kubernetes, grounded in modern software development practices.
Proven experience integrating data across platforms from multiple source-system types and formats, including open table formats and interoperability.
A solid grounding in automated testing, data quality, metadata, lineage, MDM, catalogue and policy management, security and production reliability, including classifying and protecting data with native platform features.
A demonstrated ability to mentor engineers, influence technical direction, partner with stakeholders and manage vendor delivery in cross-functional, matrix teams.
Highly proficient English and the ability to communicate clearly with people at all levels, technical and non-technical.
Useful, but not essential:
Experience in the pharmaceutical industry or another regulated industry.
What you’ll do
You will set the technical direction for how data is designed, built, governed and delivered, and make independent decisions on the right approaches. You will:
Design enterprise-scale data architectures, data models, storage strategies and integration patterns, set standards for ingestion, transformation and consumption, and recommend the technologies that fit.
Lead the development of robust batch and real-time ETL/ELT pipelines, ensuring high data quality, reliability and performance, and resolving complex engineering issues.
Provide hands-on technical leadership across AWS, Snowflake, dbt and Databricks, run architecture and code reviews, mentor data engineers and set standards and SOPs that link engineering to business value.
Implement data governance frameworks, ensure security, privacy and regulatory compliance, drive master data and data quality initiatives, define metadata, lineage and cataloguing strategies, and support risk assessments and audits.
Build data foundations, feature stores and data products for AI, ML and self-service analytics, applying agentic development and AI-assisted engineering with appropriate validation and review.
Optimise performance and cost, implement observability and alerting, and lead large-scale delivery, managing risks and dependencies and setting clear expectations for vendor designs, code, testing, documentation and operational readiness.
Evaluate modern data stacks, semantic technologies and DataOps practices, using pragmatic prototypes to show where data creates measurable business impact.
Who you’ll work with
You will join the Bangalore office of Enterprise AI Reinvent & Engineering and be part of AI Data Solutions team, where colleagues work with stakeholders across the value chain to deliver enterprise specific Data & AI use cases, while enabling high quality and responsible ways of working.
You will work closely with the AI Reinvent & Engineering’s (AIRE) core data engineering & data architect team, respective domain teams within AIRE’s commercial, manufacturing, quality & corporate functions, collaborate with AIRE’s AI Engineering team and central Data & AI Foundation team, platform and enterprise architecture teams, and data owners, security and privacy specialists, as well as vendors and external consultants. You will also technically lead and represent AIRE Data Solutions in discussions on data-driven insights and business capabilities.
Together, you will clarify requirements, align designs, run architecture reviews, escalate risks and dependencies, and share knowledge across locations and time zones so priorities move forward with clarity and speed.
What you can expect here
You will be trusted to own technical decisions and to propose and execute new approaches to complex data challenges, while upholding data governance and ethical standards. With work spanning commercial, manufacturing, supply chain and corporate data, you will build a broad view of the Novo value chain.
You will be at the forefront of AI and technology, as Novo upskills its entire workforce to advance AI as a main driver for innovation for the benefit of people living with serious chronic diseases. Your voice will shape roadmaps and standards, and once a decision is made, you will commit and move forward together.
Start now
Your impact begins today. If you are ready to technically lead the data foundations that help Novo turn data into decisions, apply for the Principal Data Engineer role by 28 October 2026.
We commit to an inclusive recruitment process and equality of opportunity for all our job applicants.
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Job details
How this role compares
Computed from every other active Data & Digital role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 233 comparable Principal Data & Digital roles across 42 biopharma companies.
Salary context
81 of 233 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)
Peers share this role's job function and a matching or adjacent seniority level -- not necessarily the same therapeutic area or country.
Where these roles are based
Top locations among the 233 comparable roles
+ 20 more countries
Seniority mix
233 of 233 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
7 of 233 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.
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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.