Associate Director, Data Engineering (Real World Data)

About the role

As Associate Director of RWD Intelligence at Formation Bio, you will lead the strategy and execution of our real-world data (RWD) capabilities, building the data foundations that power drug acquisition, clinical development, and portfolio decision-making. You will own the end-to-end lifecycle of RWD: sourcing, procurement, ingestion, harmonization, quality assurance, and delivery of analysis-ready datasets to downstream consumers across Product, Data Science, Clinical Development, and Business Development. This role sits at the intersection of data engineering, data science, and drug development. You will build and maintain scalable data infrastructure (pipelines, data models, lakes/marts) while ensuring semantic interoperability across heterogeneous data sources through ontology-driven harmonization frameworks such as OMOP. You will also manage vendor relationships and data procurement, evaluating and integrating new data assets as the portfolio evolves. The ideal candidate combines deep RWD domain expertise with strong data fluency, enabling Formation Bio to treat real-world evidence as a first-class strategic asset.

Responsibilities

• Lead the RWD Intelligence function within Data Science, owning data strategy, sourcing, and delivery of analysis-ready datasets
• Architect and maintain the supporting infrastructure (pipelines, ingestion workflows, data models, lakes/marts) across EHR/EMR, claims, registries, and genomics-linked cohorts
• Drive adoption and extension of harmonization frameworks (e.g., OMOP CDM) across heterogeneous data sources, leveraging AI/ML tools for entity resolution, ontology mapping, data quality monitoring, and automated harmonization
• Manage RWD vendor relationships end-to-end: evaluate providers, negotiate data use agreements, broker new partnerships, and integrate acquired datasets into the platform
• Partner with Data Science, Clinical Development, Business Development, and Engineering teams to define RWD use cases (trial feasibility, synthetic control arms, epidemiology, label expansion) and productize ad hoc pipelines into scalable, production-grade systems
• Foster a culture of data quality rigor, documentation, and reproducibility across all RWD assets
• About You
• Required Qualifications
• BSc or MSc in biomedical informatics, computational sciences, epidemiology, or a related quantitative field
• 5+ years of industry experience working directly with real-world data (EHR/EMR, claims, registries, linked biobank data) in pharma, biotech, health tech, or consulting, with at least 2+ years in people management
• Strong data engineering proficiency (pipelines, ingestion frameworks, data models, data lakes/marts) combined with deep working knowledge of biological and medical ontologies (ICD, SNOMED CT, MedDRA, RxNorm, ATC) and harmonization standards, particularly OMOP CDM
• Demonstrated experience with RWD procurement and vendor management: evaluating data providers, negotiating agreements, and integrating new data assets
• Proven ability to deliver RWD-derived insights across multiple drug development use cases (e.g., trial design, epidemiology, comparative effectiveness, label expansion), with familiarity across the development lifecycle from target selection through post-market
• Proficiency with modern AI/ML tools, including large language models, and their applications in data engineering and harmonization workflows
• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate complex data infrastructure concepts for clinical, scientific, and executive audiences
• Preferred Q

Benefits

Additional Information

About Formation Bio Formation Bio is a tech and AI driven pharma company differentiated by radically more efficient drug development. Advancements in AI and drug discovery are creating more candidate drugs than the industry can progress because of the high cost and time of clinical trials. Recognizing that this development bottleneck may ultimately limit the number of new medicines that can reach patients, Formation Bio, founded in 2016 as TrialSpark Inc., has built technology platforms, processes, and capabilities to accelerate all aspects of drug development and clinical trials. Formation Bio partners, acquires, or in-licenses drugs from pharma companies, research organizations, and biotechs to develop programs past clinical proof of concept and beyond, ultimately helping to bring new medicines to patients. The company is backed by investors across pharma and tech, including a16z, Sequoia, Sanofi, Thrive Capital, John Doerr, Spark Capital, SV Angel Growth, and others. You can read more at the following links: Our Vision for AI in Pharma Our Current Drug Portfolio Our Technology & Platform At Formation Bio, our values are the driving force behind our mission to revolutionize the pharma industry. Every team and individual at the company shares these same values, and every team and individual plays a key part in our mission to bring new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently.

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