Associate Director, Data Platform

The Role

Joining Moderna offers the unique opportunity to be part of a pioneering team that's revolutionizing medicine through mRNA technology with a diverse pipeline of development programs across various diseases. As an employee, you'll be part of a continually growing organization working alongside exceptional colleagues and strategic partners worldwide, contributing to global health initiatives. Moderna's commitment to advancing the technological frontier of mRNA medicines ensures a challenging and rewarding career experience with the potential to make a significant impact on patients' lives worldwide.​

Moderna is solidifying its presence within our international business services hub in Warsaw, Poland, a city renowned for its rich scientific and technological heritage. This hub provides critical functions, meeting the growing demand of Moderna’s global business operations. We're inviting professionals from around the world to join our mission and contribute to the future of mRNA medicines.​

We are seeking a highly skilled and strategic Associate Director, Data Platform to lead the design, development, and execution of a scalable, modular, and interoperable data platform. This role requires a deep technical background in cloud architecture, data engineering, AI integration, and system design, combined with strong leadership abilities to guide a cross-functional team of engineers.

As the Associate Director, you will define the platform's technical vision, architecture, and best practices, ensuring seamless integration across core components, including Data Lake, Data Catalog, SDKs, AI services, and Access Control. You will be responsible for mentoring and aligning a team of experts in backend engineering, DevOps, data engineering, and AI/ML, driving innovation while maintaining best practices in scalability, security, and governance.

Here’s What You’ll Do

Your key responsibilities will be:

• Define and drive the technical strategy, architecture, and roadmap for the data platform, ensuring modularity, interoperability, and scalability.

• Lead end-to-end design decisions for core platform components, including Data Lake, Data Catalog, Data Versioning, SDKs, Access Control, and AI Services.

• Ensure adherence to best practices for system design, security, performance, and governance.

• Oversee the development of SDKs for scalable data ingestion, transformation, and access APIs.

• Ensure robust data governance, access control, and security frameworks that meet compliance requirements.

Your responsibilities will also include:

• Lead and mentor a team of Data Engineers, Backend Engineers, DevOps Engineers, and AI/ML Engineers, fostering a culture of collaboration, technical excellence, and continuous learning.

• Align cross-functional stakeholders on development priorities, sprint planning, and execution.

• Drive a DevOps and CI/CD culture, ensuring reliability, observability, and cost optimization.

• Collaborate with AI/ML engineers to enable AI-powered workflow automation and data analytics.

• Drive the adoption of best-in-class data versioning, schema management, and metadata governance practices.

• Take ownership of additional responsibilities as needed.

The key Moderna Mindsets you’ll need to succeed in the role:

• We digitize everywhere possible – You will be at the forefront of Moderna’s digital transformation, building a cutting-edge data platform that integrates seamlessly with AI-driven analytics and automation.

• We behave like owners – You will lead and drive the evolution of Moderna’s data infrastructure, ensuring scalability, security, and efficiency while mentoring and guiding a high-performing technical team.​

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

Technical Expertise

• 7+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, or cloud architecture

•  experience with AWS, cloud-native design, and Infrastructure as Code (Pulumi).

• Data Engineering: Expertise in Data Lakes (AWS Lake Formation, Iceberg), metadata management (Glue Catalog), and data versioning (DVC).

• Backend & API Development: Strong understanding of API design, microservices (Kubernetes, Docker), authentication (OAuth, RBAC, ABAC).

• AI & ML Integration: Familiarity with AI-driven data pipelines, vector databases, LLMs (LangChain, OpenAI, PyTorch).

• Security & Governance: Experience with IAM, fine-grained access control, data privacy, and compliance best practices.

Leadership & Execution

• At least 3+ years in a leadership role.

• Ability to balance strategic vision with hands-on execution in a fast-paced, agile environment.

• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, with the ability to align engineering, AI/ML, and data teams toward common goals.

• Experience driving DevOps best practices, CI/CD automation, and cost optimization in cloud environments.

Here’s What You’ll Bring to the Table (Preferred Qualifications)

• Prior experience building and scaling modular, interoperable data platforms.

• Strong knowledge of modern AI/ML frameworks, data governance tools (Collibra), and observability platforms (Datadog).

• A desire to make an impact as part of a high-growth, transformational company that is Bold, Relentless, Curious, and Collaborative.

Moderna offers personalized benefit programs and well-being resources as unique as our global workforce so employees can do their best work.

We recognize and appreciate your diverse needs and interests and do our best to support you at work and at home with:

• Quality healthcare and insurance benefits
• Lifestyle Spending Accounts to create your own pathway to well-being
• Free premium access to fitness, nutrition, and mindfulness classes
• Family planning and adoption benefits
• Generous paid time off, including vacation, bank holidays, volunteer days, sabbatical, and a discretionary year-end shutdown
• Educational resources
• Savings and investments
• Location-specific perks and extras!

The benefits offered may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Moderna and the country where you work.

About Moderna

Since our founding in 2010, we have aspired to build the leading mRNA technology platform, the infrastructure to reimagine how medicines are created and delivered, and a world-class team. We believe in giving our people a platform to change medicine and an opportunity to change the world. 

By living our mission, values, and mindsets every day, our people are the driving force behind our scientific progress and our culture. Together, we are creating a culture of belonging and building an organization that cares deeply for our patients, our employees, the environment, and our communities.

We are proud to have been recognized as a Science Magazine Top Biopharma Employer, a Fast Company Best Workplace for Innovators, and a Great Place to Work in the U.S.

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.

If you want to make a difference and join a team that is changing the future of medicine, we invite you to visit modernatx.com/careers to learn more about our current opportunities.

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

Moderna is a place where everyone can grow. If you meet the Basic Qualifications for the role and you would be excited to contribute to our mission every day, please apply!

Moderna is committed to equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination for all employees and qualified applicants without regard to a person's race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, age, religion, national origin, ancestry or citizenship, ethnicity, disability, military or protected veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, marital or familial status, or any other personal characteristic protected under applicable law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.

Belonging, Inclusion, and Diversity are critical to the success of our company and our impact on society. We’re focused on attracting, retaining, developing, and advancing our employees and believe that by cultivating diverse experiences, backgrounds, and ideas, we can provide an environment where every employee is able to contribute their best.

Moderna is committed to offering reasonable accommodations or adjustments to qualified job applicants with disabilities. Any applicant requiring an accommodation or adjustment in connection with the hiring process and/or to perform the essential functions of the position for which the applicant has applied should

contact the Accommodations and Adjustments team at leavesandaccommodations@modernatx.com.

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