Data Architect / Senior Data Engineer

R&D Senior Scientific Data Architect and Product Owner

Business Area: Information Technology

Contract Type: Permanent

Location: Europe - remote, IT

Based in Parma, Italy, Chiesi is an international research-focused pharmaceutical and healthcare group with 90 years’ experience, operating in 31 countries with more than 7,000 employees (Chiesi Group). To achieve its mission of improving people’s quality of life by acting responsibly towards society and the environment, the Group researches, develops and markets innovative drugs in its main therapeutic areas: We are proud to be the largest global pharmaceutical group to be awarded B Corp Certification , a recognition of high social and environmental standards . Our people make a critical difference to our success, which is why it is vital that we attract and retain the right talent who will continue to enrich our culture by living and breathing our values and behaviours.

In fact, we are a global family made up of different cultures, genders, generations, ethnicities, abilities, sexual identities and many other diversities.

Chiesi Research & Development

Our R&D team represents a fundamental asset for the business. It is divided into integrated functional areas focusing on pipeline projects including discovery and preclinical research, global technical development, drug delivery technology, clinical development, regulatory affairs, pharmacovigilance, intellectual property, quality assurance, R&D project and portfolio management. Headquartered in the new purpose‑built and fully integrated Research and Development Centre in Parma (Italy), the team also has important operations in Paris (France), Chippenham (UK), Cary (US), Stockholm (Sweden), Toronto (Canada) and Shanghai (China).

As part of Chiesi’s global R&D transformation, we are building a unified R&D Data Ecosystem anchored by the creation of a next‑generation central repository, data governance, and semantic platforms. This strategic initiative aims to bring together people, platforms, and processes to establish a trusted, connected, and intelligent data foundation for entire R&D.

By harmonizing data products enablement, governance, and semantics, we will enable consistent understanding and interoperability of scientific and operational data across domains, empowering insights, and cross‑functional collaboration—turning fragmented information into a strategic asset.

The R&D Data Strategy, Enablement & Governance will oversee the management and governance of Chiesi's R&D data ecosystem and facilitate the entire cultural shift within R&D.

The R&D senior scientific Data Architect and product owner will design, build and implement the data Pipeline for R&D while maintaining a coherent R&D data model. This role is both strategic and hands‑on: you will define the overall R&D data architecture (covering Preclinical, Clinical, CMC, Regulatory, Pharmacovigilance, QA, PPM) and build use‑case driven R&D data products. The role will partner with GICT and R&D domain experts to translate scientific requirements into data products while simultaneously serving as the Product Owner, setting the vision, managing the backlog, and prioritizing features for the Data central repository to ensure it effectively meets the analytical and operational needs of R&D scientists and stakeholders.

R&D central Data repository Architecture:

- Design and implement the unified R&D Data Hub architecture, defining data integration frameworks and data models that represent complex R&D entities, enabling data lineage and interoperability across silos while ensuring alignment with enterprise IT to maximize business value delivery.

Lead the technical design and optimization of the central Lakehouse environment and other data warehouse platforms, including resource provisioning, performance tuning, access control, and Backlog Management.

Data Pipelines & Integration:

• Design, Build and implement scalable and secure ETL/ELT pipelines for structured and unstructured R&D data.
• Own the ingestion, transformation and consolidation workflows from multiple sources, ensuring data is cleansed, standardized and ready for provisioning.
• Use modern data engineering tools and cloud services to optimize performance and reliability.

MDM and Data Transformation Enablement:

• Define the Master Data Management (MDM) strategy for core R&D domains (e.g. compounds, assays, protocols), including golden‑record models, matching logic and ingestion strategy as part of ETL/ELT design.
• Define and implement data quality rules for ETL/ELT in collaboration with functional SMEs and R&D Data product owner(s).

Serve as a hands‑on mentor and advisor to scientists on data management topics. Act as the connector between R&D functions and enterprise/GICT.

• Lead workshops with scientific and GICT stakeholders to align data products demand and priorities.
• Influence without direct authority: build consensus on data strategy, shepherd change adoption, and ensure solutions meet diverse business needs.

o Minimum of 5 years of experience as a Data Architect or Principal Data Engineer.

o Proven hands‑on experience designing and implementing Data products in Snowflake or similar modern cloud data warehouse platforms.

o Strong background in data modeling techniques.

o Experience working in the Pharmaceutical R&D or Life Sciences domain is highly preferred, with an understanding of R&D data flows and regulatory requirements.

Advanced degree (Master’s/PhD) in Computer Science, Data Science or a related field.

Technical Skills: Strong expertise in SQL, Python, Spark, or similar technologies. Experience with ETL/ELT pipelines, building cloud data lake/WH (including tools like Snowflake, Vertica, ...), Data governance, and modeling (Semantics, Knowledge Graph) and transformation. Good knowledge of relational and ideally vector databases functionalities.

Demonstrated ability to work cross‑functionally and influence senior stakeholders without direct authority.

Excellent verbal and written communication, leadership, and negotiation skills. Leadership and social influence

Quality orientation

In Chiesi we firmly believe that our people are our most valuable asset, that is why we invest in continuous training, learning and development. Therefore, we strive to continuously promote and satisfy development needs, paying particular attention to the quality of our working environment and to collective well‑being.

• We want our people to come to work happy every day, and we know how important it is to find the right work‑life balance in order to be able to give our best. That is why we offer flexible working approach, remote working, support in the relocation process, tax assistance service for foreign colleagues and many other people‑care services.

#