This review provides an overview of the Senior Governance Engineer position within GSK's Onyx Research Data Platform organization. It is designed to help prospective candidates understand the opportunity and make informed career decisions.
Opportunity Overview:
GSK's Onyx Research Data Platform represents a significant investment aimed at revolutionizing how data, knowledge, and prediction are leveraged to discover new medicines. This is a full-stack initiative encompassing product leadership, data engineering, infrastructure, and advanced AI/ML capabilities. The core mission is to create a superior data experience for GSK's scientific and decision-making teams, boosting productivity by minimizing time spent on mundane data tasks. Furthermore, the platform strives to provide cutting-edge AI/ML environments to accelerate predictive capabilities and attract leading talent.
The Role of Senior Governance Engineer:
As a Senior Governance Engineer, you will be a pivotal technical contributor responsible for transforming high-level business or technical requirements into well-defined, executable specifications. A strong emphasis on metrics – both for the impact of your work and its operational efficiency – is crucial. You will play a vital role in ensuring the reliability, scalability, and security of infrastructure and applications developed by product teams. This involves close collaboration with platform infrastructure and data operations teams to integrate security and governance solutions into the existing technological landscape. Deep familiarity with security and governance tools and processes, particularly within regulated industries, will be essential for translating requirements into efficient and user-friendly products.
Key Responsibilities and Advantages for Candidates:
- Architectural Impact: Design and deploy scalable, reliable governance solutions by integrating existing technologies, open-source tools, and new integrations. This offers a fantastic opportunity to shape the technological foundation of a critical R&D platform.
- Policy Automation: Build and maintain an automated policy engine that leverages "policy as code," is cloud-native (GCP), and integrates seamlessly with other Onyx platforms. This is a chance to work with modern, cutting-edge approaches to governance.
- Enabling "Governance by Design": Implement user-friendly governance products through computational and automatable engines, directly integrating with data platforms, metadata, and authorization systems. This role allows you to directly influence how data is managed and secured.
- Compliance and Security Focus: Understand, amplify, and integrate requirements from security and internal regulatory teams to ensure compliance with policies and regulations. This is a crucial area for growth and impact within the pharmaceutical industry.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work with diverse teams to translate business needs into robust governance solutions, fostering strong communication and problem-solving skills.
- Agile Development: Utilize standard agile SDLC processes, including CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code, for efficient development and deployment. This aligns with modern software development best practices.
- Continuous Learning and Improvement: Stay abreast of the latest trends in security, governance, and data governance, contributing to the ongoing enhancement of the platform. This role promises continuous professional development.
- Mentorship and Leadership: Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior team members, cultivating a collaborative environment and strengthening leadership skills.
- Problem-Solving: Troubleshoot and resolve complex governance-related issues, providing essential technical support.
Key Considerations for Your Career Path:
- Industry Impact: This role offers a direct pathway to influencing the discovery and development of new medicines within a leading global biopharma company. The work has tangible implications for patient health.
- Technological Advancement: You will be at the forefront of implementing and managing advanced data governance solutions within a cloud-native environment (GCP). This experience is highly valuable in today's tech landscape.
- Skill Development: The position encourages the development of expertise in areas such as policy as code, attribute-based access control, and cloud infrastructure management.
- Career Growth: GSK emphasizes an agile working culture and provides opportunities for continuous learning and career progression. The mention of a bonus and long-term incentive program indicates recognition for contributions.
- Structured Environment: While embracing agile, the role also emphasizes adherence to SDLC processes and compliance with regulatory requirements, offering a balance of flexibility and structure.
Ideal Candidate Profile:
The ideal candidate will possess a Bachelor's degree and proficiency in at least one programming language such as Go, Python, Scala, or Java. Experience with cloud-based data governance solutions (e.g., OPA, Immuta, Privacera, Google Cloud Data Catalog/DataPlex) and policy/compliance monitoring is essential. Preferred qualifications include extensive knowledge of computational data governance, data security, compliance regulations, authorization/authentication as code, and experience with the CNCF ecosystem, particularly Kubernetes.
This role is ideal for a proactive, technically adept individual passionate about data management and governance, looking to make a significant impact within a forward-thinking organization. It offers a compelling opportunity to contribute to a mission-critical initiative at the intersection of science, technology, and data.