FDE-Principal Data Engineer (Forward Deployed)

Location: Remote | Type: Contract

About Newpage Solutions

Newpage Solutions is a global digital health innovation company helping people live longer, healthier lives. We partner with life sciences organisations which include, pharmaceutical, biotech and healthcare leaders, to build transformative AI and data driven technologies addressing real-world health challenges.

From strategy and research to UX design and agile development, we deliver and validate impactful solutions using lean, human-centered practices.

We are proud to be a ‘Great Place to Work®’ certified company for the last three consecutive years. We also hold a top Glassdoor rating and are named among the "Top 50 Most Promising Healthcare Solution Providers" by CIOReview. As an organisation, we foster creativity, continuous learning and inclusivity, creating an environment where bold ideas thrive and make a measurable difference in people’s lives.

Your Mission

We are seeking a Principal Data Engineer who will design and build data integration, storage systems, and data infrastructure that deliver business value. In this role, you will focus on data architecture decisions, integration quality, and reliable delivery while leveraging AI tools to enhance productivity. You will verify and review AI-generated code to ensure it meets quality standards.

In this forward-deployed role, you will be embedded directly with business units including Commercial, Manufacturing, and R&D. You will operate like a "startup CTO" for data — bridging the gap between building data products and solving real business problems through rapid solution delivery and deep domain expertise. As part of the discovery-to-scale pipeline, you will identify recurring data patterns and hand off validated solutions to Platform Engineers for generalization into enterprise capabilities.

This role encompasses business unit technical strategy and architectural direction for data. You will define strategic direction and be accountable for outcomes, shape data practices across the business unit and maintain external visibility. You will handle business unit complexity, creating clarity from ambiguity

What You’ll Do

Responsibilities:

• Business: Shape technology-driven data strategy, represent the data engineering perspective at executive level, and be recognised as a bridge between data engineering and business. Influence domain strategy across the business unit and shape how engineering engages with the business through data.
• Delivery: Drive delivery of the most critical data initiatives, establish data engineering delivery practices across the business unit, and be the technical authority on high-stakes data projects. Define data integration patterns and best practices across the business unit, architect large-scale data flows, and solve the most complex integration challenges.
• People: Develop technical leaders, shape data engineering talent strategy across the business unit, and build high-performing data engineering teams. Create collaborative culture across the business unit, transform dysfunctional team dynamics, and mentor others on collaboration excellence.
• AI-Augmented Development: Shape AI development tooling strategy across the business unit for data engineering. Pioneer novel AI-augmented development patterns for data pipelines, and establish practices that balance AI speed with verification rigour across the organisation.
• Scale: Lead architectural decisions for complex data systems across teams, establish quality standards for your area, mentor engineers on data architecture, and own technical debt strategy. Define data modelling standards across the business unit, handle extreme scale and complex distributed data challenges, and innovate on approaches.
• Documentation: Establish documentation standards across teams in your area, build knowledge management systems for data lineage and pipeline documentation, and mentor engineers on effective technical writing. Shape the discovery-to-scale pipeline, defining the organisational approach to pattern generalization for data solutions.
• Reliability: Shape reliability culture and standards for data systems across the business unit. Pioneer new reliability practices for data pipelines, solve large-scale reliability challenges, and be recognised as an authority on data system resilience.
• Process: Shape lean culture and practices across the business unit for data delivery. Innovate on flow optimisation approaches for data engineering, solve large-scale process challenges, and be recognised externally for delivery excellence.

Behaviour

• Don't Lose Your Curiosity: Shape organisational culture around curiosity and continuous learning in data engineering. Sponsor experimental initiatives across the organisation. Be recognised externally as a thought leader in data problem discovery. Influence industry practices around innovation and exploration in enterprise data.
• Own the Outcome: Define organisational accountability standards focused on business impact through data. Shape industry practices around outcome ownership in the AI era. Sponsor transformational data initiatives with full outcome accountability. Be recognised externally for ownership culture leadership.
• Be Polymath Oriented: Champion cross-disciplinary learning. Create holistic data solutions spanning technical and business domains. Embody the Renaissance Engineer ideal. Translate specialised data engineering knowledge into accessible explanations. Think like a business insider.
• Communicate with Precision: Create spec-driven development practices for data systems. Mentor others on precise communication. Span C-level executives to frontline workers. Drive clarity as a core value across your function. Represent the organisation externally.
• Think in Systems: Shape systems design practices across your function for data architectures. Conduct chaos engineering experiments on data infrastructure. Influence cross-team architecture decisions. Create clarity from complexity. Bridge technical data systems with business processes.

Expert-level Skills

• Data Integration: You define data integration patterns and best practices across the business unit. You architect large-scale data flows, solve the most complex integration challenges, and are the authority on enterprise data integration.
• Data Modeling: You define data modelling standards across the business unit. You handle extreme scale and complex distributed data challenges, innovate on approaches, and are recognised as a data architecture authority.
• Architecture & Design: You define architecture standards and patterns across the business unit. You innovate on approaches to large-scale data challenges, shape AI-integrated system design, and are recognised externally as an architecture authority.
• Business Immersion: You are a recognised thought leader in your domain. You influence domain strategy across the business unit, exemplify the business immersion mindset that defines forward-deployed engineering, and shape how engineering engages with the business.
• Full-Stack Development: You work comfortably in any language and rapidly acquire new skills as needed. You deliver production solutions in days not months, shape full-stack practices across the business unit, and exemplify polymathic engineering.
• Problem Discovery: You shape approaches to problem discovery across the business unit. You are recognised for transforming ambiguous data situations into clear opportunities, influence how teams engage with business data problems, and are the go-to person for the most undefined challenges.
• Rapid Prototyping & Validation: You shape culture around rapid validation and iterative delivery across the business unit. You are recognised for transformative fast delivery, define standards for prototype-to-production, and exemplify the "deliver in days" mindset.
• Multi-Audience Communication: You shape communication practices across the business unit. You represent engineering externally, communicate at board and executive level, and are recognised as an exceptional communicator who bridges any audience gap.
• Stakeholder Management: You shape stakeholder practices across the business unit. You manage executive relationships, represent engineering at the highest levels, and are recognised for exceptional stakeholder partnerships.
• Team Collaboration: You create collaborative culture across the business unit. You transform dysfunctional team dynamics, are recognised for building exceptional teams, and mentor others on collaboration excellence.

Practitioner-level Skills

• AI Evaluation & Observability: You lead evaluation strategy across teams in your area, establishing annotation guidelines, training human-calibrated LLM judges, and building evaluation pipelines that connect tracing to datasets to experiments. You design multi-evaluator strategies for complex quality dimensions.
• AI Literacy: You lead AI adoption decisions across teams in your area. You assess AI tools and vendors systematically, train engineers on AI concepts, and establish guidelines for appropriate AI use.
• AI-Augmented Development: You optimise AI tool usage across teams in your area, train engineers on AI-augmented workflows, evaluate new AI development tools, and establish practices that balance AI speed with verification rigour.
• Code Quality & Review: You establish and enforce quality standards across teams in your area. You mentor engineers on effective code review, ensure verification depth for AI-assisted development, and drive testing strategies.
• Cloud Platforms: You architect multi-region, highly available data solutions across teams. You optimise for cost and performance, lead cloud migrations for your area, and mentor engineers on cloud architecture patterns.
• DevOps & CI/CD: You design deployment strategies for complex multi-service data systems across teams, optimise pipeline performance and reliability, define DevOps practices for your area, and mentor engineers on infrastructure.
• Site Reliability Engineering: You define reliability standards across teams in your area, drive post-incident improvements systematically, design capacity planning processes, and mentor engineers on SRE practices.
• Developer Experience: You lead developer experience initiatives across teams in your area. You design comprehensive self-service data platforms, establish DX metrics, conduct systematic user research, and mentor engineers on platform-as-product thinking.
• Knowledge Management: You lead knowledge management initiatives across teams in your area, create knowledge systems and taxonomies for data assets, establish practices that make institutional data knowledge persistent, and mentor others on knowledge sharing.
• Pattern Generalization: You lead pattern generalization initiatives across teams, define criteria for when to generalize versus keep custom, and establish intake processes for receiving validated data solutions from Forward Deployed Engineers. You mentor engineers on abstraction design.
• Technical Writing: You define documentation standards across teams in your area, create documentation systems and templates, train engineers on spec-driven development, and ensure documentation quality across projects.

What You Bring

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Data Engineering, Software Engineering, or related field with 10+ years of relevant professional experience.
• Deep technical expertise with a proven track record in enterprise data architecture, large-scale data integration, and data engineering culture leadership.
• Extensive production experience with cloud data platforms and distributed data processing at scale is required.
• Demonstrable fluency with AI coding tools and proven experience architecting data infrastructure that supports enterprise-scale generative AI applications is essential.
• Experience defining data strategy, leading cross-team data initiatives, and representing data engineering at executive level is required.
• A track record of developer advocacy, community building at scale, and organisation-wide engineering culture leadership in data engineering is strongly valued.

Bonus Skills / Experience

• Must have exceptional communication skills and demonstrated ability to influence at executive level. This role requires comfort defining strategic direction in ambiguous environments, building trust-based relationships across business units, developing technical leaders, and making strategic decisions that shape data engineering practices at the business unit level. You will be the technical authority on data engineering and will represent the discipline externally.

What We Offer

At Newpage, we’re building a company that works smart and grows with agility, where driven individuals come together to do work that matters. We offer:

• A people-first culture - Supportive peers, open communication and a strong sense of belonging
• Smart, purposeful collaboration - Work with talented colleagues to create technologies that solve meaningful business challenges
• Balance that lasts - We respect your time and support a healthy integration of work and life
• Room to grow - Opportunities for learning, leadership and career development, shaped around you
• Meaningful rewards - Competitive compensation that recognises both contribution and potential

Ready to Apply?

Let’s build the future of health together. Apply below or reach out to:
Ramadevi.bhumireddy@newpage.io

More about Newpage

Newpage is a digital health solutions company. We devote ourselves to advancing the quality of life by enhancing health and optimizing the longevity of people. We do this by, passionately building futuristic technologies for global organizations across the healthcare ecosystem. We partake at every stage from problem definition, strategy & service design, user research, UX design, and agile software development – utilizing lean practices to deliver and validate highly innovative digital health solutions that drive user value and business transformation.

Newpage is recognized by ‘CIO’s Review’ as “Top 50 Promising Healthcare Solution Providers” and Great Place to Work Certified (GPTW) 2023 & 2024.