Director (IT)

Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.•Boston, MA

7d•$159,053 - $268,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Reporting to the VP, Data & Analytics, the Ioniverse (Data & AI) Platform Owner / Enterprise Solutions Architect will serve as the senior technical leader responsible for operationalizing the Ioniverse as an enterprise-scale data and AI platform centered on Databricks and modern cloud engineering practices. This role owns the platform roadmap, technical direction, architecture standards, and delivery guardrails for the Ioniverse. It establishes reusable engineering patterns and governance controls, enables teams across enterprise domains, and helps move trusted data and AI solutions into production safely, quickly, and consistently. The preference is onsite/hybrid but willing to consider remote.

Requirements

Significant experience in data platform, data engineering, analytics engineering, AI/ML platform, or architecture roles with hands-on delivery responsibility.
Strong experience with Databricks and cloud-based data platforms in enterprise production environments.
Proven ability to design and implement production-grade data, analytics, automation, and AI solutions.
Experience with cloud architecture, pipeline design, data engineering, DevOps, and production support.
Experience defining standards for data quality, metadata, lineage, governance, access control, and lifecycle management.
Strong SQL and Python skills, with the ability to work directly with engineers and technical platform teams.
Ability to translate business priorities into practical architecture, roadmaps, engineering standards, and execution decisions.
Strong judgment in architecture trade-offs, build-versus-buy decisions, and vendor evaluation.
Experience in life sciences or another regulated industry, including enterprise data governance, cross-functional data product design, and platform operating models.
Familiarity with Unity Catalog, MLflow, semantic layers, AI-assisted analytics, and enterprise systems spanning SAP, CRM, ERP, Commercial, and Clinical domains.
15 years of related experience with a bachelor’s degree or 12 years and a master’s degree.

Responsibilities

Own the Ioniverse platform roadmap, technical direction, and architecture standards for enterprise data and AI solutions, with Databricks as the core platform foundation.
Define and implement target-state patterns for data pipelines, semantic access, AI enablement, observability, security, and production support.
Lead the design, automation, optimization, and operational support of data engineering environments across development, test, and production.
Establish onboarding standards, guardrails, and promotion paths that move domain data products from sandbox experimentation to certified, trusted production use.
Define and enforce standards for data quality, metadata, lineage, certification, stewardship, access control, and reuse in partnership with governance, privacy, compliance, and security stakeholders.
Build reusable accelerators, templates, reference architectures, playbooks, and shared platform services that improve delivery speed, consistency, scalability and maintainability across teams.
Implement DevOps best practices for CI/CD, monitoring, cost optimization, and MLOps to support advanced analytics and AI initiatives in production.
Partner with BRPs, portfolio leads, domain product owners, data stewards, and technical teams to align priorities, intake, definitions, service levels, and certification expectations.
Assess tools, vendors, and partner recommendations with a bias toward leveraging Ionis investments, reducing fragmentation, and strengthening long-term internal capability.
Partner across data engineering, data science, AI engineering, data intelligence, and business teams to accelerate delivery of priority data and AI solutions into trusted production use.
Define interoperable data, workflow, and semantic patterns that enable consistent adoption across Commercial, Research, Development, Finance, and other enterprise domains.
Experience leading consulting or partner teams and delivering business value in Agile, iterative environments.
Ensure solution patterns incorporate appropriate security, role-based access, lifecycle controls, fit-for-purpose AI and analytics delivery patterns, and sound cloud cost management.
Lead consulting and vendor partners while serving as a hands-on platform leader who prototypes, troubleshoots, and helps implement the architecture and patterns they define.