Head of Digital Health Data Engineering

Fort Worth, TX, United States

At Alcon, we aspire to lead the world in innovating life-changing vision products because when people see brilliantly, they live brilliantly. As a global leader in eye care, we believe in innovating especially through cutting edge technology. We are on a journey to offer the widest array of eye care and eye health offerings with products that can treat the entire eye at each stage of life.

Our Digital Health team is harnessing technology to build a leading portfolio of digital health solutions that will transform the eye care experience for medical professionals to patients and enable improved patient outcomes – from a predictive health care delivery platform harnessing ML and analytics to innovative medical device software.

As Head of Digital Health Data Engineering, you will be the responsible for leading the engineering efforts to develop and operationalize the suite of data products and analytics platform services within Digital Health. You will manage and mentor a full stack team of engineers that include data architects, data engineers, DevOps and testing engineers. You will collaborate closely with Product leaders, the Data Science team, and Engineering counterparts in both Digital Health franchises and foundational service teams, as well as Alcon’s enterprise Digital Technology & Data team, to define the architectural and technical designs and requirements for our data products and to align with the broader company strategy. In addition, you will be accountable for fostering a culture of excellence in engineering. This includes adopting, maintaining, and implementing best practices among managers, engineers, and agile team members. We are a fast-growing team, which will give you the opportunity to shape our ways of working and culture - think start-up, but inside a global leader in eye care. We are looking for someone who is a strategic thinker and problem solver.

Key Responsibilities

Lead the design, development and operationalization of a reusable and modular data & analytics platform building upon Alcon’s enterprise IT architecture that enables efficient, consistent, automated value generation from data.

Partner with management, product leaders and the foundational service team to define the overall data strategy and data architecture across the suite of digital health solutions.

Spearhead the development and implementation of data standards and best practices for data governance, data management, and data quality assurance for Digital Health.

Build, manage, and mentor a team of high-performing and passionate engineering talent, including data engineers, data architects, test automation engineers and DevOps engineers.

Work closely with the privacy and security team to define data privacy and security requirements. Develop and implement necessary technologies, policies, and procedures to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and standards such as HITRUST, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO, SOC-II, etc.

Establish strong partnerships with Alcon’s enterprise Digital Technology & Data team, R&D, and other cross-functional teams, driving alignment and efficiency with the broader company technology strategy and infrastructure capabilities.

Foster a culture of creativity, collaboration, speed, innovation, and excellence while continuously elevating the quality and caliber of our engineering organization.

Manage relationships with third-party technology vendors and data providers to ensure data quality, accuracy, and security.

Create, manage, and measure Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and sub-level Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as velocity, estimation accuracy and defect percentages.

Ensure that department achieves objectives and project completion within budget and time frame.

Competency Profile

Data Engineering Leader: A accomplished results-driven leader with a wealth of experience in building and overseeing high-performing data engineering teams within an agile setting. Demonstrates a proven track record of successfully development of cloud-based modular data platforms in the healthcare space.

Collaborative Leader: A leader who thrives in dynamic, cross-functional team environments, fostering an open and respectful atmosphere. Possesses a team-first mindset, valuing diverse perspectives and contributing to a collaborative work culture.

Positive and Adaptable: Approaches challenges with a positive and can-do attitude. Willing to challenge the status quo, demonstrating ability to understand when and how to take appropriate risks to drive performance.

Passionate Problem Solver: Excels in navigating ambiguous situations, leveraging a wealth of experience to identify problems and remove roadblocks for agile teams.

Effective Communicator and Influencer: A strong communicator with exceptional influencing skills to effectively communicate with all levels of the organization (verbally and written); Proven ability to effectively build productive cross-departmental relationships and drive alignment among leaders on critical decisions.

Key Requirements/Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, operational research, or a related technical discipline.

Over 10 years of leadership experience in data and software engineering, demonstrating a proven track record of successfully leading engineering teams in an Agile/Scrum environment throughout the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

5+ years of hands-on experience in data architecture design and data modeling. Demonstrated experience in leading the design, development, delivery and maintenance of large-scale and highly reliable cloud-based data platform solutions.

2+ years of experience working with remote teams.

5+ years of experience in designing both ETL/ELT for batch processing and data streaming architectures for real-time or near real-time data ingestion and processing.

5+ years of hands-on experience in two or more database technologies (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB) and data warehouses (e.g., Redshift, BigQuery, or Snowflake), as well as cloud-based data engineering technologies (e.g., Kafka, PubSub, Apache Airflow, Glue)

Experience with public clouds such as AWS, GCP, and Azure.

Extensive experience in Dashboard/BI and Data visualization tools (eg. Tableau, Quicksight)

Experience in MLOps tools (eg. Sagemaker, Vertex AI)

Extensive experience in data privacy and data security-related regulatory requirements, such as HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, FDA cybersecurity for medical devices, and related security frameworks (e.g., ISO, NIST, HITRUST, SOC II).

Deep knowledge and experience in various interoperability data standards in healthcare (e.g., HL7, FHIR, c-CDA, DICOM).

Experience in release management and CI/CD processes, from development release through production deployment.

Preferred Qualifications :

Experience in building software as a medical device (SaMD), Quality Management System (QMS), and knowledge of ISO-13485, 62304, 21 CFR part 11/820 standards.

Experience in EMR and PACS integration

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Alcon is an Equal Opportunity Employer and participates in E-Verify. Alcon takes pride in maintaining a diverse environment and our policies are not to discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training, promotion or other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status. Alcon is also committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If, because of a medical condition or disability, you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process, or in order to perform the essential functions of a position, please send an email to [email protected] and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information.