Staff Software Engineer - 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 multi-team initiatives with organizational impact. You will set own direction within broader strategic goals, influence multiple teams and be recognized as a domain expert. You will handle very high complexity driving through ambiguity to deliver results.
ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES
● Delivery: Lead technical delivery of complex projects across multiple teams, unblock others through hands-on contributions, and ensure engineering quality
● AI: Design AI-augmented engineering workflows for your area, evaluate new AI tools, train engineers on effective AI usage, and balance speed with verification
● People: Coach multiple engineers on career growth, lead hiring for technical roles across your area, and shape team technical culture
● Business: Drive business outcomes through technical solutions across your area, influence product roadmaps, and partner effectively with business stakeholders
● Process: Drive process efficiency within your team, coordinate cross-functional technical work, and lead retrospectives
● Documentation: Design documentation strategies for your projects, ensure knowledge persists beyond individuals, and write specifications that enable effective collaboration
ROLE BEHAVIOURS
● Don't Lose Your Curiosity: Drives team curiosity through challenging questions; creates environments where exploration and experimentation are encouraged; models problem discovery orientation; seeks out ambiguity rather than avoiding it
● Own the Outcome: Drives accountability culture focused on outcomes not deliverables; owns business relationships and impact metrics across their function; makes trade-offs between custom solutions and generalizable work; there is no "I must run this by X"; ensures verification rigor for AI-generated code
● Be Polymath Oriented: Bridges gaps between engineering, design, business, and science; rapidly immerses in new domains; speaks the language of Commercial, Manufacturing, or R&D; makes better decisions by understanding broader context
● Communicate with Precision: Separates requirements, designs, and tasks with precision; enables AI to generate accurate code through clear specifications; translates between technical and business language; facilitates productive discussions
● Think in Systems: Maps complex system interactions across technical and business domains; anticipates cascading effects; designs systems that degrade gracefully; understands how technology changes impact business operations
PRACTITIONER-LEVEL SKILLS
● AI-Augmented Development: You optimize 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 rigor.
● Business Immersion: You immerse in operations until you think like an insider. You rapidly acquire domain expertise through direct observation, translate between business and engineering seamlessly, and mentor engineers in your area on immersion.
● Data Integration: You navigate complex enterprise data landscapes across teams, build relationships to gain data access, handle undocumented schemas through investigation, and build robust, maintainable integration solutions. You mentor engineers in your area on data integration challenges.
● Full-Stack Development: You build complete applications rapidly across any technology stack for teams in your area. You select the right tools for each problem, balance technical debt with delivery speed, and mentor engineers on full-stack development.
● Multi-Audience Communication: You influence through communication at all levels—from frontline to executive. You handle difficult conversations skillfully, train engineers in your area on effective communication, and represent teams across the function.
● Problem Discovery: You seek out undefined problems rather than avoiding them. You embed with users to discover latent needs, coach engineers in your area on problem discovery techniques, and turn ambiguity into clear problem statements.
● Rapid Prototyping & Validation: You lead rapid delivery initiatives across teams in your area, coach on prototype-first approaches, establish trust through consistent fast delivery, and define clear criteria for prototype-to-production transitions.
● 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.
● Stakeholder Management: You influence senior stakeholders effectively across your area, manage complex stakeholder landscapes with competing agendas, build trust rapidly with new stakeholders, and shield teams from organizational friction.
● Team Collaboration: You build high-performing teams across your area, navigate complex interpersonal dynamics, foster psychological safety, and create environments where diverse perspectives are valued and heard.
WORKING-LEVEL SKILLS
● AI Evaluation & Verification: You design evaluation frameworks for AI-generated code and content. You test AI systems systematically, document limitations, and ensure appropriate verification depth based on risk.
● AI Literacy: You evaluate AI solutions critically for specific use cases. You understand bias, fairness, and hallucination risks. You make informed decisions about when AI helps vs when traditional approaches are better.
● Architecture & Design: You design components and services independently for moderate complexity. You make appropriate trade-off decisions, document design rationale, and consider AI integration points in your designs.
● Cloud Platforms: You design cloud-native solutions, manage infrastructure as code, implement security best practices, and make informed service selections. You troubleshoot cloud-specific issues.
● Code Quality & Review: You produce consistently high-quality, well-tested code. You review AI-generated code critically and never ship code you don't fully understand. You identify edge cases and ensure adequate test coverage.
● Developer Experience: You design golden paths—opinionated, well-documented workflows developers can follow with minimal cognitive load. You conduct user research, create self-service capabilities, and build for Day 50, not just Day 1.
● DevOps & CI/CD: You build complete CI/CD pipelines end-to-end, manage infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation), implement monitoring, and design deployment strategies for your services.
● Knowledge Management: You design knowledge structures for discoverability, ensure knowledge accessibility across teams, facilitate knowledge sharing sessions, and reduce single-person dependencies.
● Lean Thinking & Flow: You optimize team processes systematically, measure and improve cycle time, remove bottlenecks proactively, and deliver rapidly while maintaining quality.
● Pattern Generalization: You extract reusable components from field solutions, design appropriate abstractions that balance flexibility with simplicity, and collaborate with FDEs to validate generalized solutions in new contexts.
● Service Management: You design service offerings with clear value propositions, manage service level agreements, improve service delivery based on user feedback, and communicate service status proactively.
● Technical Debt Management: You prioritize debt systematically based on risk and impact, balance debt reduction with feature work, and make pragmatic trade-offs. You know when to take on debt intentionally.
● Technical Writing: You create comprehensive documentation for complex systems. You write precise specifications that enable accurate AI-generated code, establish documentation practices for your projects, and ensure docs are discoverable.
QUALIFICATIONS
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field with 8-12 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