Rust Job: Innovation and Engineering Technologist

The Software Engineer may be an experienced individual contributor but will also play a leadership role on smaller initiatives and projects overseeing other Software Engineers. The Software Engineer will pair with other Software Engineers, Leads, and Architects to design, build, test and deploy software solutions on a local and global basis. The role will be involved in analysing requirements, implementing software solutions, testing components, release and maintenance. The Software Engineer must strive to gain as much understanding and exposure to the development stack as well as the domains they are working in as well as contribute to the development stack. This role will also be involved in providing recommendations on enhancements, monitoring the performance, and support maintenance of deployed applications

About AstraZeneca

At AstraZeneca we turn ideas into life changing medicines. Working here means being bold, thinking big and working together to make the impossible a reality!

About the role

Based in our Global Innovation Technology Centre (GITC) in Guadalajara, Mexico. The Technologist will fulfil two key roles.

(1) Whilst primarily reporting to the Global Innovation and Engineering Labs organisation, participating in global innovation activities.

(2) You will compliment this role by owning accountability for day-to-day activities of the recently commissioned, dedicated innovation lab in the GITC.

You will be expected to have a broad knowledge of Technology, staying abreast of key technology trends. Domain experts are expected to provide globally relevant tech leadership for AstraZeneca in a constantly evolving landscape, rapidly specializing in the latest areas of new technologies. You will showcase, deliver, and prove business value through Proof of Technology (PoT) assessments, work with business partners to deliver Proof of Value (PoV) projects, and where success has been shown to help scale the technology into the relevant production teams.

What you’ll be doing

• You will proactively lead scouting initiatives across the technology landscape to identify new emerging trends, technologies, and opportunities
• Establish yourself as a domain guide to give a globally relevant tech leadership for AstraZeneca on evolving specialist technology areas
• Build, develop, configure, and maintain technology solutions required for evaluations or PoT’s, iterating, or pivoting as the need arises
• You will provide technical leadership to support broader innovation team conversations with business
• Translate business requirements and ideas for Innovation into leads, scouting tech, or turning PoT’s, into deliverable outcomes to ensure business value realisation is achieved
• You will be responsible for delivering technology positioning documentation and white papers for new and emerging technology areas
• Ensure Innovation delivery activities are carried out in alignment with required processes and governance
• Lead and run the Tech Innovation infrastructure. This includes our cloud accounts, source control systems, license servers, etc
• Managing the lab space and equipment, securing availability, maintenance and safekeeping;
• Input into Guadalajara’s innovation learning curricula and ensure alignment to global best practices;

Skills and Competencies:

• Software engineering skills are crucial to this role. You will need to be confident getting hands on architecting and programming PoTs. This could be using an existing tech stack already in use in the business, from scratch, or using new frameworks and libraries. You may be working by yourself, or as part of a larger team.
• Do you have an entrepreneurial attitude and the ability to navigate Senior Stakeholders through uncertainty.
• Able to work with external partners to influence, extract and deliver timely product innovation
• You will be proficient at producing Executive briefings, White Papers and articulating strategies
• Able to work with ambiguity and prioritise a demanding workload in an exciting and dynamic space.
• Fervent desire to stay ahead of the latest trends and developments across the innovation landscape
• You will have a passion and desire to get hands on, willingness, drive and ability to learn new skills rapidly
• Familiarity with Design Thinking, Lean principles, Agile and customer led UX
• Validated experience and track record of delivering and implementing solutions with Continuous Development lifecycles

Demonstratable Experience:

• Track record of delivering innovative technology enabled business change
• Knowledge or experience of demonstrating cloud compute and services (AWS, GCP or Azure)
• Knowledge of multiple programming languages. We mostly end up working with C#, Python, and JavaScript; but experience with C++, Java, Go, Rust, etc would be advantageous.
• Experience in Databases (relational and NoSql)
• DevOps – rapid prototyping
• Working knowledge of the latest Data Science trends, strategies, and technologies. Computer Vison, object detection, text extract, synthetic data sets etc
• Exposure to, or strong knowledge of real-time 3D technologies, including AR/VR technologies. This would include asset creation, and experience creation. Unity is our engine of choice, but expose to other engines such as Unreal would also be acceptable
• Proof of solo development on projects, as well as working as part of a team. Knowledge of source control and project management methodologies.
• Knowledge of the drug discovery value chain and medicines development, as well as the restrictions this applies to technologies available for us to use

Qualifications:

• Degree in software engineering, computer science, or a suitable number of years of relevant experience
• AWS Associate or Professional (Architect, Developer) or GCP/Azure equivalent is desirable

About the team

Our IT Global Innovation and Engineering Labs team focusses on the identification, rapid assessment, implementation and adoption of emerging technologies and novel ideas to build benefit in the business. This role is based in the innovation labs, where we provide insight and recommendations on many current and emerging technologies across all business functions within AstraZeneca, as well as other industries. We have hands on experience with a vast number of technologies to deliver Proof of Concept projects, as well as to partner directly with vendors to draw outcomes as part of the technology evaluation. We work with everything from start-ups and open-source technologies, through to the tech giants where we can get early access to innovative technologies that could be implemented at AstraZeneca.

This role is about more than just building prototypes. You will be expected to be able to distil technical information into formats consumable by senior leaders within the company, to help influence where future investment should go. Where the business does not have the existing skills for a new technology, you will need to help shape how that capability will be put together. Creating a proof of concept is easy, scaling it into a production business capability is where our team truly offers value.