Director of DevOps & Containerization (pharma)

  • Edison, NJ
  • Posted 2 days ago | Updated 2 days ago

Overview

On Site
$160,000 - $220,000
Full Time
No Travel Required

Skills

DevOps
CI/CD
Kubernetes
Docker
Terraform
Ansible
Cloud
Microservices
Containerization
Java
Python
Jenkins
Helm
Observability
Monitoring

Job Details

A leading pharmaceutical organization focused on innovation in research and drug delivery, is seeking a Director of DevOps and Containerization to drive the modernization of cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and container orchestration strategy. This is a hands-on leadership role, ideal for an engineer-manager with deep technical experience in automation, infrastructure-as-code, and container platforms, combined with strategic oversight of development and deployment workflows across the enterprise.

Key Responsibilities

  • Lead the end-to-end design, implementation, and optimization of CI/CD pipelines across multiple product and research teams.

  • Define and enforce DevOps best practices to support scalable, secure, and compliant deployment environments aligned with GxP and pharma data regulations.

  • Architect, implement, and manage container platforms (Kubernetes, Docker) for both development and production workloads.

  • Collaborate closely with application and data engineering teams to enable reproducible, automated environments across research and production systems.

  • Oversee infrastructure configuration, IaC (Terraform, Ansible, or equivalent), and environment management across cloud and hybrid setups (AWS / Azure / Google Cloud Platform).

  • Mentor DevOps engineers and guide the transition toward microservices-based deployments.

  • Collaborate with QA, Compliance, and InfoSec to ensure systems meet all regulatory and security requirements.

  • Drive performance monitoring, logging, and observability initiatives across containerized and cloud-native systems.

  • Contribute to codebase and automation scripts as needed strong coding ability in Python and Java required.

Required Skills & Experience

  • 10+ years of experience in software infrastructure, DevOps, or cloud engineering; at least 3+ years in a leadership or director-level capacity.

  • Proven expertise in container orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker, Helm) and CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, etc.).

  • Strong background in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform), including VPC design, IAM, and cost optimization.

  • Hands-on experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform, Ansible, or CloudFormation).

  • Proficient in Java and Python for automation, deployment tooling, and application integration.

  • Familiarity with pharma or regulated environments (GxP, HIPAA, FDA validation frameworks) strongly preferred.

  • Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills.

Nice to Have

  • Exposure to data pipelines (Airflow, Kafka, or similar) and ML/AI infrastructure management.

  • Understanding of container security (Falco, Aqua, Prisma Cloud) and DevSecOps principles.

  • Experience modernizing legacy applications to containerized or serverless environments.

Employers have access to artificial intelligence language tools (“AI”) that help generate and enhance job descriptions and AI may have been used to create this description. The position description has been reviewed for accuracy and Dice believes it to correctly reflect the job opportunity.