Principal Software Engineering Lead (eCOA) - Evinova

AstraZeneca • Gaithersburg, MD

5d • $165,657 - $217,425 • Hybrid

About The Position

Evinova, a health-tech business within the AstraZeneca Group, is focused on accelerating digital health solutions in the life sciences sector to improve patient outcomes. Digital health is a strategic priority for AstraZeneca, aiming to enhance patient experience and outcomes. The Product Engineering organization comprises cross-functional squads that deliver innovative digital products globally, utilizing agile methodologies and shipping on quarterly program increments. This role is for a hands-on engineering leader who will own the technical direction and delivery of the eCOA product area, leading a multi-squad engineering organization. The role involves significant hands-on coding, architectural decision-making, team development, and technical strategy, with an emphasis on embedding AI-assisted development and AI-native engineering culture.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent demonstrated through professional experience
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong track record of building and shipping production systems.
• 3+ years leading engineering teams (squads, chapters, or similar) while remaining hands-on with code.
• Deep proficiency in at least one of our core stacks: React/React Native (frontend), Node.js/Java (backend), AWS cloud services.
• Demonstrated ability to make sound architectural decisions across frontend, backend, and infrastructure.
• Practical, daily experience using AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude, Cursor, or similar) in your own coding workflow.
• Strong understanding of agile delivery frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe) applied in practice, not just theory.

Nice To Haves

• Experience building or deploying AI/ML features in production applications, including agentic AI systems or LLM integrations.
• Experience developing and delivering electronic Clinical Outcome Assessments (eCOA) or patient-facing clinical trial software.
• Familiarity with GxP, SaMD validation, or regulated software development processes.
• Experience with remote patient monitoring (RPM) solutions including patient-reported data and clinician-facing visualizations.
• Contributions to open-source projects or a visible track record of technical thought leadership (blog posts, conference talks, published architectural decisions).
• Clinical research domain experience.

Responsibilities

• Regularly review pull requests, provide substantive code-level feedback, and enforce quality standards across squads.
• Make and own architectural decisions for the eCOA platform, including API design, data models, service boundaries, and infrastructure choices.
• Write production code, particularly for complex or foundational components where your expertise accelerates the team.
• Pair with engineers on difficult problems and use these sessions as coaching opportunities.
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted development tools and workflows, establishing team conventions for AI code generation, prompt engineering, and automated testing.
• Define and enforce technical standards: testing strategy, CI/CD pipeline health, observability, and deployment practices.
• Embed AI tools (coding assistants, agentic workflows, automated code review) into the team’s daily development process.
• Evaluate and integrate AI capabilities into the eCOA product itself, including intelligent data capture, adaptive questionnaire logic, and patient experience personalization.
• Champion a culture where engineers own AI-generated output with the same rigor as hand-written code: thorough review, testing, and accountability.
• Stay current with rapid advances in AI-assisted development and translate those into practical team-level improvements.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a multi-squad engineering organization.
• Develop squad leads into strong technical leaders in their own right.
• Set a high technical bar in hiring: personally conduct technical interviews and assess candidates’ ability to build, not just describe.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement, psychological safety, and intellectual honesty about technical debt and tradeoffs.
• Manage performance with clear, measurable expectations rooted in engineering output and quality, not just process compliance.
• Partner with Product Owners to translate clinical requirements into sound technical plans, ensuring feasibility, scalability, and regulatory compliance.
• Drive execution against quarterly program increments with predictable, high-quality delivery.
• Collaborate across the Unified Trial Solution engineering organization to ensure architectural coherence and shared platform leverage.

Benefits

• Qualified retirement program (401(k) plan)
• Paid vacation and holidays
• Paid leaves
• Health benefits including medical, prescription drug, dental, and vision coverage
• Short-term incentive bonus opportunity
• Eligibility to participate in our equity-based long-term incentive program

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal