Software Engineer Level III - Forward Deployed

ROLE SUMMARY
We are seeking a skilled Software Engineer who will design, build, and maintain software systems that deliver business value. In this role, you will focus on code quality, architecture decisions, and reliable delivery while leveraging AI tools to enhance productivity. You will verify and review AI-generated code to ensure it meets our quality standards.
In this forward-deployed role, you will be embedded directly with business units in R&D. You will operate like a "startup CTO," bridging the gap between building 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 patterns and hand off validated solutions to Platform Engineers for generalization into enterprise capabilities.
This role encompasses large features and technical initiatives including leading small projects. You will do self-directed work while seeking input on strategic decisions, shape team practices and mentor junior engineers. You will handle high complexity with comfort navigating ambiguity.
ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES
● Delivery: Own feature delivery from design through deployment, making sound technical trade-offs to ship value on time
● AI: Integrate AI capabilities into solutions, critically evaluate AI-generated code, and never ship code you don't understand
● People: Mentor junior engineers on technical topics, contribute to hiring through interviews, and actively build team knowledge
● Business: Translate business needs into technical solutions, manage stakeholder expectations, and articulate technical decisions in business terms
● Process: Contribute to process improvement, maintain team workflows, and coordinate with adjacent team members
● Documentation: Create clear documentation for features you build, contribute to team knowledge bases, and update docs proactively
ROLE BEHAVIOURS
● Don't Lose Your Curiosity: Proactively investigates root causes; experiments with new technologies and AI capabilities; protects time for exploration; treats failure as learning; discovers requirements through immersion in problem spaces
● Own the Outcome: Takes end-to-end ownership of features and business outcomes; accepts technical debt intentionally when it accelerates value; builds trust through rapid delivery of working solutions; owns stakeholder relationships; balances quality with delivery speed
● Be Polymath Oriented: Applies knowledge from one domain to inform decisions in another; studies adjacent fields like design, business, or science; begins learning domain language of business partners
● Communicate with Precision: Writes clear documentation and specifications; reduces ambiguity in requirements; crafts effective prompts for AI tools; adapts communication style for different audiences
● Think in Systems: Identifies upstream and downstream impacts; uses observability tools to trace requests across services; understands feedback loops; maps dependencies before making changes
WORKING-LEVEL SKILLS
● AI-Augmented Development: You integrate AI tools strategically into your development workflow. You review AI-generated code with the same rigor as human code and never ship code you don't fully understand.
● Business Immersion: You apply deep domain knowledge to technical solutions, bridge business and technology conversations fluently, speak the domain language naturally, and shadow operations to build understanding.
● Data Integration: You integrate multiple data sources independently, clean messy datasets, handle inconsistent formats and missing values, and document data lineage. You troubleshoot integration failures.
● Full-Stack Development: You deliver complete features end-to-end independently—frontend, backend, database, and infrastructure (CloudFormation/Terraform). You make pragmatic technology choices and deploy what you build.
● Multi-Audience Communication: You present complex topics clearly to any audience, facilitate productive discussions, translate between technical and business language fluidly, and write compelling proposals and specifications.
● Problem Discovery: You navigate ambiguous problem spaces independently. You discover requirements through observation and user shadowing, reframe problems to find higher-value solutions, and distinguish symptoms from root causes.
● Rapid Prototyping & Validation: You deliver working solutions rapidly (days not weeks). You use prototypes to build stakeholder trust, know when to stop prototyping and start productionizing, and balance speed with appropriate quality.
● Site Reliability Engineering: You design observability strategies for your services, lead incident response, implement resilience testing, and conduct blameless post-mortems. You balance reliability investment with feature velocity.
● Stakeholder Management: You manage multiple stakeholders with different interests, navigate conflicting priorities diplomatically, and build trust through consistent delivery. You tailor communication to each audience.
● Team Collaboration: You facilitate collaboration across the team, resolve minor conflicts before they escalate, enable others to succeed, and contribute positively to team dynamics and morale.
FOUNDATIONAL-LEVEL SKILLS
● AI Evaluation & Verification: You apply systematic evaluation criteria to AI outputs, understand common AI failure modes (hallucination, bias, outdated training data), and question AI outputs rather than accepting them.
● AI Literacy: You explain the difference between ML models, rule-based systems, and generative AI. You identify potential AI applications in your work and understand common AI limitations and failure modes.
● Architecture & Design: You explain and apply common patterns (MVC, microservices, event-driven) to familiar problems. You contribute to design discussions and identify when existing patterns don't fit.
● Cloud Platforms: You deploy applications to cloud platforms and use common services (compute, storage, databases, queues). You understand cloud pricing and basic security configuration.
● Code Quality & Review: You write readable, well-structured code. You use linting tools, write basic unit tests, and participate constructively in code reviews—both giving and receiving feedback.
● Developer Experience: You create friction logs documenting developer pain points. You write getting-started guides and contribute to improving existing golden paths based on user feedback.
● DevOps & CI/CD: You configure basic CI/CD pipelines, understand containerization (Docker), and can troubleshoot common build and deployment failures.
● Knowledge Management: You create searchable knowledge articles proactively, maintain team documentation, and organize information so others can find it.
● Lean Thinking & Flow: You map workflows to identify bottlenecks, apply basic lean techniques (WIP limits, pull systems), and suggest process improvements for your work.
● Pattern Generalization: You identify patterns across multiple implementations and propose candidates for generalization. You understand the trade-offs between custom and reusable solutions.
● Service Management: You document services you own, participate in service reviews, handle basic service requests, and understand SLAs for your services.
● Technical Debt Management: You document technical debt with context and business impact, contribute to prioritization discussions, and address debt in code you touch.
● Technical Writing: You write clear READMEs, inline documentation, and technical guides. You update existing docs when making changes and ensure documentation matches implementation.
QUALIFICATIONS
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field with 5-8 years of relevant experience.
Work Location Assignment: On Premise
Pfizer is an equal opportunity employer and complies with all applicable equal employment opportunity legislation in each jurisdiction in which it operates.
Information & Business Tech