Director, Principal Engineer, Developer Surfaces

Use Your Power for Purpose The vision for Pfizer’s Digital function is a more integrated and coordinated healthcare model that improves patient outcomes, fuels tomorrow’s breakthrough therapies, and brings medicines to patients faster. Within Platform Engineering, the Spark Pro team builds and runs Pfizer’s internal developer platform — the paved road that lets any engineering team take an idea from a laptop to production in minutes, whether that’s a web application, an autonomous agent, or an MCP server. Developers reach that platform through several surfaces — native Mac and Windows desktop apps, web-based tooling, and programmatic MCP interfaces — each built and owned by strong, independent engineering teams. This role sits inside that team, bringing coherence across the desktop, web, and MCP surfaces without slowing down the engineers who already own each one. Our vision is to innovate and engineer breakthrough digital products to power business performance and transform global health. We do this through our culture of agile, fast-adapting and pioneer working. What You Will Achieve We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Developer Surfaces Lead who will be accountable for the technical direction, architecture, and delivery of Spark Pro’s developer surfaces — desktop, web, and MCP. In this technical leadership role, you will act as the executor and the visionary behind the surfaces’ technical direction. Rather than leading a single team, you will lead through influence across the experienced engineers who already own each surface, reconciling differing approaches into one coherent direction and ensuring a successful delivery of high-quality developer experiences from inception to completion. This role requires exceptional technical knowledge, hands-on credibility in the Electron and Vue desktop codebase, and the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams while sharing responsibility with the engineers driving each surface. You will also be accountable for delivery of security-and privacy-first capabilities while creating an environment where engineers can do their best work as measured by a quarterly Developer’s Experience survey, and alignment and contribution to the service network and technical engineering standards. Key Responsibilities A normal work week consists of leading one or more teams of engineers to deliver and implement technical solutions, following your design approach to meet your assigned program objectives and KPIs. You will also collaborate closely and often with your program lead, Digital Lead, and Product Owners, to ensure that technical decisions and their implementation align with broader strategic priorities. You represent engineering in program and stakeholder meetings, as such you’ll need to be able to think on your feet: provide consultation, identify risks based on a variety of factors, and rely on your past experiences to identify potential solutions and develop ballpark estimates. In many situations you will be working with technology that is new to Pfizer and requires you to learn quickly, be able to read and understand documentation, and architect robust and scalable solutions that align with our business objectives. Using influence more than authority, you will lead teams of engineers on the implementation of the solution. Individual members of the team are responsible for delivering on their commitments, but the team supports each other. The team pride themselves on the quality of their code, our delivery practices and breadth of our test coverage. You will be expected to document your work. Key responsibilities for a Principal Engineer are listed below: Technical Leadership

• Serve as the top technical authority across the developer surfaces — Mac, Windows, web, and MCP — making decisions on technology choices, design approaches, solution architecture and implementation.
• Lead and oversee the entire lifecycle excellence of engineering projects, ensuring alignment with architectural vision and adherence to best practices.
• Responsible for maintaining good code quality by promoting and ensuring secure code hygiene.
• Responsible for guiding the correct configuration of SaaS solutions to ensure security and compliance.
• Build a team able to manage change. Take appropriate risks to achieve the desired results, balancing risks to stability and current norms versus the need for constant change, improvement, and simplification.
• Facilitate the conversation between Enterprise Architects, Business Architects, Vendors and Developers, by providing technical clarity on solution(s) to build and code to write, move content from ideation into delivery to move from concept to reality. Cross-Team Collaboratio n
• Act asa translator between business stakeholders and technical engineers, to ensure that technical, security and privacy considerations are represented in strategic discussions and business objectives are being met by our solutions.
• Align objectives, dependencies, and schedules across multiple teams to keep teams unblocked, and to ensure seamless projects execution.
• Collaborate with other Principal Engineers, and through the Principal Engineers Forum, to share best practices, quality standards, address improvement areas, and ensure effective communication of information.
• Collaborate with security teams to monitor vulnerabilities, implement defences, and ensure compliance with security best practices.
• Collaborate with digital operations and support to ensure smooth BAU operations. Excellence by Desig n
• Continuously discover, define, architect, deliver, and enable solutions that support program OKRs.
• Offer deep technical expertise, providing insights and guidance, ensuring solutions are secure, compliant, scalable, maintainable, and efficient.
• Advocate for the adoption of best practices, new technologies, automation, and continuous improvement initiatives in both technical and privacy domains.
• Foster a DevOps model of success by building a culture of shared responsibilities and transparency leading to higher quality and quicker delivery of outcomes.
• Stay updated on emerging technologies, industry trends, and best practices, and apply this knowledge to improve engineering processes and drive innovation within the organization.
• Ensure that privacy and security are an integral part of the system design, not merely layered on. Coaching & Mentorship
• Participate in or lead code reviews, where applicable.
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior and mid-level engineers, facilitate knowledge sharing and taking an active role in supporting the development of the wider team and their careers. Foster a culture of excellence, innovation, and continuous learning within the engineering team.
• Act on Developer Experience (DX) survey findings and feedback from the engineering team members, to drive continuous improvement initiatives to increase the “Ease of Delivery” of the team. People Management & Developmen t
• This role has no direct reports — you lead through influence, setting technical direction for the engineers who already own each surface.
• Mentor and coach engineers across each surface, and build consensus among strong, independent contributors.
• Support Pfizer's Diversity and Inclusion objectives, as applicable Incident Management & Recover y
• Lead or assist in the response to security incidents, ensuring rapid containment, mitigation, and recovery.
• Lead troubleshooting during operational outages, guiding the team to diagnose and resolve issues quickly.
• Work towards system resilience and implement post-mortem analyses to identify root causes and prevent future incidents.
• Ensure that solutions are designed with data privacy considerations from the outset. Required Skills & Knowledg e In order to fulfil the responsibilities listed above, we expect that you possess and demonstrate:
• Extensive experien