Associate Director, Veeva Platform Engineering Lead

Job Description

The Opportunity

Join a global biopharma company with a 130-year legacy and mission to achieve new milestones in healthcare. Be part of technology driven, data-led organization supporting a diversified portfolio of medicines, vaccines and animal health products. Work alongside passionate teams that use data, analytics and insights to drive decisions, and tackle some of the world’s greatest health threats.

Our Technology Centers are globally distributed hubs that enable our digital transformation and business outcomes across IT. Each Tech Center is supported by a focused group of leaders who invest in the well-being of our people and work together across locations to optimize global connections and continuously share and improve best practices.

• This role is based at our Hyderabad Tech Center and follows a hybrid working model (at least 3 days onsite, 2 days remote). Candidates are expected to reside within commuting distance of the Hyderabad office.

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced, hands-on engineering leader to join the Veeva Platform Center of Efficiency asAssociate Director, Veeva Platform Engineering Lead. Reporting to the Director, Center of Efficiency, this role leads engineering execution across the enterprise Veeva Platform ecosystem, with India as the primary location and Prague, Budapest, and Barcelona also considered.

Unlike traditional Vault-specific leadership roles, this position operates at the Veeva Platform level and requires an enterprise-first mindset. The successful candidate will work across multiple Veeva Vault domains, driving consistency, reuse, engineering standards, and platform-wide best practices that maximize business value across the broader Veeva ecosystem.

The ideal candidate combines deep Veeva expertise, strong integration and engineering leadership, platform thinking, and hands-on technical capability. This is a player-coach role requiring both leadership execution and technical engagement while leading a multidisciplinary team of engineers and specialists and enabling AI-driven ways of working.

What will you do in this role:

·       Lead engineering execution across the Veeva Platform ecosystem, ensuring successful delivery of platform priorities, backlog commitments, and roadmap-aligned initiatives.

·       Translate platform engineering strategy into executable plans and measurable outcomes in partnership with the Center of Efficiency (CoE) & Center of Strategy (CoS) Leadership.

·       Manage and develop a multidisciplinary team including Integration Engineers, Veeva Configuration Specialists, Quality Engineers, Business Analysts, Release Managers, and AI Engineers.

·       Partner with Product Owners, Scrum Masters, business stakeholders, Vault teams, vendors, and matrix teams to prioritize, plan, and deliver high-quality platform capabilities.

·       Drive platform-wide adoption of reusable engineering standards, integration patterns, release practices, and configuration best practices across Veeva Vault domains.

·       Balance divisional requirements with enterprise platform objectives, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, reusable, and aligned with long-term platform goals.

·       Provide technical leadership across Veeva Vault implementations, integrations, and platform services, including Veeva APIs, MuleSoft, event-driven architectures, OAuth, and secure authentication frameworks.

·       Lead platform security initiatives including MFA enablement, authentication modernization, OAuth adoption, and remediation of platform risks and technical debt.

·       Manage vendors and matrix teams to deliver high-quality outcomes in a complex global environment.

·       Champion AI-enabled engineering practices, automation, and continuous improvement initiatives to improve platform quality, predictability, productivity, and operational efficiency.·        

What should you have:

• Primary skill: Veeva Vault, GxP, Mulesoft integration, Agile
• Secondary skill: Stakeholder management, Veeva Vault Certification

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related discipline.
• 10+ years of experience in enterprise software delivery, platform engineering, solution engineering, or technology leadership roles, including 5+ years leading technical teams and engineering delivery organizations.
• Deep expertise on architecture, implementation, platform activities & functional knowledge on multiple Veeva Vault domains such as Quality, Clinical, Regulatory, Safety, Medical, or related Veeva applications, with demonstrated ability to operate beyond individual Vault boundaries in a multi-Vault platform ecosystem.
• Strong experience delivering enterprise integrations using Veeva APIs, MuleSoft, event-driven architectures, API-led connectivity, and modern integration patterns.
• Experience implementing secure integration and authentication patterns, including OAuth, authentication modernization, and enterprise security best practices.
• Experience working in GxP-regulated environments with an understanding of compliance, validation, quality, and operational risk requirements.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills with the ability to influence technical and business leaders across multiple organizations.
• Experience managing Agile delivery processes, engineering backlogs, prioritization, demand management, and roadmap-aligned execution.
• Demonstrated ability to balance strategic objectives with hands-on technical leadership in a player-coach capacity.
• Experience across multiple Veeva Vault domains rollout strategy
• Veeva Vault Platform Administrator Certification, and/or a Vault Development / Platform Developer track certification (or demonstrable equivalent hands-on experience).

• Experience leading platform modernization, transformation, or engineering excellence initiatives.
• Knowledge of AI-assisted software engineering, GenAI technologies, and emerging AI delivery practices.
• Experience with ITIL disciplines including Incident, Change, and Problem Management.
• Experience with cloud platforms, DevOps practices, and enterprise architecture principles.
• Experience building and scaling engineering teams within global, matrixed organizations.
• Experience within the pharmaceutical or life sciences domain.
• Any vault-specific Veeva certification (Clinical, RIM, QMS, Safety, Medical).
• Experience with Veeva Vault Java SDK.

• Builds and operationalizes a high-performing Veeva Platform Engineering delivery team.
• Delivers strategic platform backlog initiatives and roadmap-aligned engineering commitments.
• Drives platform-wide adoption of reusable patterns, standards, and best practices.
• Advances platform security through authentication, modernization, and remediation of platform risks and technical debt.
• Optimizes release management processes across the Veeva ecosystem.
• Partners effectively and build trust with Vault teams, business stakeholders, vendors, and platform leadership.
• Accelerates engineering productivity through AI-enabled ways of working.
• Promotes enterprise-first thinking and helps evolve the Veeva Platform into a scalable, secure, and reusable enterprise capability.

Our technology teams operate as business partners, proposing ideas and innovative solutions that enable new organizational capabilities. We collaborate internationally to deliver services and solutions that help everyone be more productive and enable innovation.

Who we are:

We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world.

What we look for:

Imagine getting up in the morning for a job as important as helping to save and improve lives around the world. Here, you have that opportunity. You can put your empathy, creativity, digital mastery, or scientific genius to work in collaboration with a diverse group of colleagues who pursue and bring hope to countless people who are battling some of the most challenging diseases of our time. Our team is constantly evolving, so if you are among the intellectually curious, join us—and start making your impact today.

Required Skills:

Preferred Skills:

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Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

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