Sr. Director, Software Engineering, Digital for Research & CMC Development

The Role

We are seeking a Senior Director of Software Engineering to lead the software engineering organization supporting Research and CMC Development. Reporting to the Head of Digital for Research and CMC Development (D4RT), this leader will establish clear engineering standards and operating rhythms, drive accountability and predictable execution, and build a high-performing organization capable of delivering reliable, scalable digital solutions that advance scientific research and development.

This leader will oversee full-stack application and integration engineering capabilities, leading and developing engineering leaders and senior technical contributors while strengthening engineering practices across the organization.

The ideal candidate combines deep software engineering experience with strong operational and people leadership. They bring the technical credibility to effectively lead senior engineers, evaluate system-level tradeoffs, and develop exceptional technical talent. While this is not a hands-on development role, this leader will bring strong systems thinking, understand the broader implications of technical decisions, and empower technical leads and other senior contributors to provide technical leadership across the organization.

The successful candidate will also have significant experience within biotechnology or biopharmaceutical organizations and a strong understanding of scientific Research and CMC Development environments. They will understand the scientific context, workflows, ways of working, and cross-functional dynamics required to translate complex scientific needs into effective digital and software strategies.

Here's What You'll Do

Software Engineering Operations

• Lead the evolution of the software engineering organization, establishing the leadership practices, operating model, engineering standards, and talent capabilities needed to support a growing Research and CMC Development digital portfolio.
• Build and develop strong engineering leaders and senior technical contributors, enabling them to grow talent, delegate effectively, establish clear ownership, and operate at the right level of technical and organizational leadership.
• Establish clear and consistent expectations for performance and career progression across the engineering organization, creating transparency around what strong performance looks like and how individuals grow in scope and impact.
• Establish effective engineering operating rhythms and portfolio management practices that provide visibility into priorities, capacity, resource allocation, commitments, delivery health, dependencies, and risks, enabling informed tradeoffs when demand exceeds capacity.
• Build a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and ownership in which teams deliver against commitments, leaders address systemic barriers to delivery and meaningful improvements to engineering practices and ways of working.

Application & Integration Engineering

• Provide senior oversight across custom full-stack application and integration engineering capacities supporting scientific and operational workflows.
• Guide engineering strategy across commercial SaaS platforms, custom applications, scientific systems, enterprise platforms, and data products, promoting reusable APIs, services, integration patterns, and shared capabilities.
• Drive simplification and sustainability across the technology landscape, ensuring applications and integrations leverage sound cloud architecture and engineering practices and are designed with reliability, observability, security, scalability, and operational support appropriate to their use.

Partner with Product Management

• Partner with Product Management to maintain alignment across product priorities, planned initiatives, engineering capacity, and existing commitments, enabling effective resource planning and informed portfolio tradeoffs.
• Bring an engineering and systems perspective into product planning, helping teams understand how proposed solutions fit within the broader digital ecosystem and when software engineering capabilities are needed.
• Develop engineering leaders who can partner effectively with Product leads, while working across D4RT leadership to strengthen Product-Engineering ways of working, shared planning, and decision-making.

Partner Across Digital

• Build strong partnerships across Digital, including Data Engineering, DevOps and Cybersecurity to navigate shared priorities and dependencies and effectively leverage enterprise platforms, data products, standards, and expertise.
• Bring an informed engineering perspective to cross-Digital initiatives and enterprise technology decisions, understanding their implications for Research and CMC Development and constructively influencing approaches where needed.

Drive Scientific & Operational Impact

• Build trusted relationships with leaders and stakeholders across Research and CMC Development, developing a deep understanding of scientific workflows, development processes, data flows, and decision-making needs to inform engineering strategy and priorities.
• Translate complex and sometimes ambiguous scientific needs into pragmatic, scalable digital solutions that improve scientific and operational outcomes.

Here's What You'll Need (Basic Qualifications)

• 15+ years of progressive software engineering and technology experience, including 10+ years of engineering leadership experience with responsibility for engineering teams, leaders, and senior technical contributors.
• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, including significant hands-on experience designing and delivering production software, with strong technical depth across modern software architecture, cloud-native engineering, full-stack development, APIs, distributed systems, and enterprise integration patterns.
• 5+ years of modern cloud architecture and cloud-native engineering principles, with experience evaluate architectural approaches and tradeoffs across complex software environments.
• 10+ years of leadership experience within biotechnology or biopharmaceutical organizations, with direct experience supporting scientific Research, CMC Development, Technical Development, Process Development, or closely related R&D functions.
• Demonstrated experience leading and scaling software engineering organizations, including developing engineering leaders and senior technical talent, evolving engineering operating models and practices, and driving strong organizational performance.

Here's What You'll Bring to the Table

• Experience with scientific and laboratory technology ecosystems, including ELN, LIMS, SDMS, laboratory automation, scientific data platforms, modeling or analytical systems, or related capabilities.
• Experience integrating commercial scientific SaaS platforms within complex biotechnology or biopharmaceutical technology environments.
• Experience applying AI-enabled engineering tools and practices to improve software development productivity, quality, and scalability, with the technical fluency to guide engineering teams on effective and responsible adoption.

Pay & Benefits

At Moderna, we believe that when you feel your best, you can do your best work. That's why our benefits and well-being resources are designed to support you-at work, at home, and everywhere in between.

• Competitive healthcare, plus voluntary benefit programs to support your unique needs
• A holistic approach to well-being, with access to fitness, mindfulness, and mental health support
• Family planning benefits, including fertility, adoption, and surrogacy support
• Generous paid time off, including vacation, volunteer days, sabbatical, global recharge days, and a discretionary year-end shutdown
• Savings and investments to help you plan for the future
• Location-specific perks and extras

• The salary range for this role is $210,900.00 - $379,200.00. 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 individual's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, specific competencies, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, performance, and business or organizational needs.
• The successful candidate may be eligible for an annual discretionary bonus, other incentive compensation, or equity award, subject to company plan eligibility criteria and individual performance.

Our Working Model

As we build our company, we have always believed an in-person culture is critical to our success. Moderna champions the significant benefits of in-office collaboration by embracing a 70/30 work model. This 70% in-office structure helps to foster a culture rich in innovation, teamwork, and direct mentorship. Join us in shaping a world where every interaction is an opportunity to learn, contribute, and make a meaningful impact.

Moderna is a smoke-free, alcohol-free, and drug-free work environment.