Senior Software Engineer

Job Description

Attention NJ Applicants: In April 2020, our Company announced plans to consolidate our New Jersey campuses into a single New Jersey headquarters location in Rahway, NJ by 2023. Therefore, the NJ work location for this role will be temporarily based and the exact timing of the departmental move to Rahway, NJ will be communicated at a future date.

Our IT team operates as a business partner proposing ideas and innovative solutions that enable new organizational capabilities. We collaborate internationally to deliver the services and solutions that help everyone to be more productive and enable innovation.

Our Company’s Scientific Software Engineering team is responsible for the core components used to build our Company Research Labs’ data analytics, visualization, and management workflows. Our products play a crucial role at most stages of the research process by delivering on our Company’s commitment to embrace advanced digital solutions and automated data analytical workflows in helping our scientists with drug discovery.

We collect, annotate, evaluate petabytes of scientific data (multi-omics, chemistry, imaging, safety) used in biomarker research, drug safety/efficacy, drug target discovery, and compendium diagnostic development. We help our scientists a) to process, evaluate scientific data at scale by developing highly parallelized analytical workflows ran on HPC infrastructure (on-prem & cloud); b) to manage, explore and visualize various scientific data modalities by developing bespoke data models, ETL processes, data retrieval and visualization services using distributed micro-service architecture, FAIR data principles, SPA type dashboards, industry specific regulatory compliant data integrity, auditing, and security access controls.

We are a creative and disciplined software engineering team, using agile practices and established technology stacks to design and develop large-scale data analytics, visualization, and management software solutions for local and on-cloud hosted HPC datacenters, as well as to integrate 3rd party analytical platforms with internal data workflows to address pressing engineering and data science issues of life-science.

We are looking for Software Engineers who can break down and solve complex problems with a strong motivation to get things done with a boots-on-the-ground, pragmatic mindset! Our engineers own their products end to end and influence the way how our products and technology are deployed to facilitate most aspects of drug discovery impacting hundreds of thousands of patients around the world. We are looking for engineers who can creatively handle complex dependencies and ambiguous requirements, competing business priorities, while producing fit-for-purpose, optimal solutions.

We are hoping that you are passionate about collaborating across the interface between hard-core software development and research and discovery data analysis.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Design and implement engineering tools, applications and solutions that facilitate research processes and scientific discovery in several areas of our drug discovery process.
• Help drive the design and architecture of adopted engineering solutions with a detail-oriented mindset
• Promote and help with the adoption of development, design, architecture, and DevOps best practices, with a particular focus on agile deliver mindset
• Drive product discovery and requirements clarification for ambiguous and/or undefined problems framed with uncertainty.
• Manage technical and business dependencies and bottlenecks; balance technical constraints with business requirements; and deliver maximum business impact with solid customer experience
• Help stakeholders with go/no-go decisions on software and infrastructure by assessing gaps in existing software solutions (internal/external), by vetting technologies/platforms and vendor products
• Strong collaboration, organization skills in cross-functional teams; ability to effectively communicate with technical and non-technical audiences; work closely with scientists, peers, and business leaders in different geographical locations to define and deliver complex engineering features.

Education Minimum:

• B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science/engineering or equivalent technical field

Qualifications:

• Proficient (2+ years hands-on experience)
• Proven ability (2+ years hands-on experience)
  • w/ at least one language: Java (preferred), Python or C#
  • to build production workflows using Java/Spring (preferred), Python or C#/ .Net
  • to build microservice-architecture solutions with a focus on scientific data analysis and management
  • to drive API (REST, GraphQL, etc.) driven, modular development of production workflows and integration with 3rd party vendor platforms
  • to create relational data models, ETL processing pipelines using PostgreSQL (preferred), Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL
  • to integrate AWS services (EC2/RDS/S3/Batch/KMS/ECS etc..) into production workflows
• 1+ year hands-on experience
  • to debug and develop with workflow managers (such as Nextflow) and AWS resource schedulers (such as AWS Batch)
  • with scripting languages: Python, Bash
  • with Linux OS command line
  • with building CI/CD workflows with Jenkins or equivalent
  • with using IaC frameworks (CloudFormation, Ansible, Terraform)
• Strong collaborator, communicator
• Strong problem-solving skills
• Has made technical partnerships with research and business teams

Preferred:

• 1+ years of experience
  • to integrate algorithms, scientific workflows, machine learning tools developed by computational and/or quantitative data scientists
  • to debug and develop with workflow managers (such as Nextflow) and AWS resource schedulers (such as AWS Batch)
  • with developing and deploying containerized applications (i.e., Docker, Singularity)
  • with frontend development (any JS framework)
  • with containerization platform: Kubernetes/Helm
  • with end-to-end testing framework: Robot/Selenium
• Prior experience with
  • with non-relational database vendors (Elastic Search, etc.)
  • with building, troubleshooting C, C++ libraries and dependencies on Linux (maven, make, etc.)
  • with using statistical software development stacks Matlab and/or R
• Familiarity with a life sciences research space (i.e., molecular biology, physiology, pathology, infectious diseases, immune-oncology, biochemistry, etc.)

Our Support Functions deliver services and make recommendations about ways to enhance our workplace and the culture of our organization. Our Support Functions include HR, Finance, Information Technology, Legal, Procurement, Administration, Facilities and Security.

Who we are …

We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been inventing for life, bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world.

What we look for …

Imagine getting up in the morning for a job as important as helping to save and improve lives around the world. Here, you have that opportunity. You can put your empathy, creativity, digital mastery, or scientific genius to work in collaboration with a diverse group of colleagues who pursue and bring hope to countless people who are battling some of the most challenging diseases of our time. Our team is constantly evolving, so if you are among the intellectually curious, join us—and start making your impact today.

NOTICE FOR INTERNAL APPLICANTS

In accordance with Managers' Policy - Job Posting and Employee Placement, all employees subject to this policy are required to have a minimum of twelve (12) months of service in current position prior to applying for open positions.

If you have been offered a separation benefits package, but have not yet reached your separation date and are offered a position within the salary and geographical parameters as set forth in the Summary Plan Description (SPD) of your separation package, then you are no longer eligible for your separation benefits package. To discuss in more detail, please contact your HRBP or Talent Acquisition Advisor.

For positions located in the United States and Puerto Rico – Subject to applicable law, all new hires (including internal transfers) must demonstrate that they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or that they qualify for a medical or religious exemption to this vaccination requirement. New hires (including internal transfers) to a position that, as determined by the Company, requires routine collaboration with external stakeholders (such as roles in health services or customer-facing commercial or research-based roles) (“Customer-Facing Role”) who are not vaccinated must qualify for a medical or religious exemption and be in a position that the Company determines can accommodate unvaccinated employees without causing an undue burden to business operations. If, following dialog with the candidate as appropriate, it is determined that the candidate either a) does not qualify for a religious or medical exemption or, b) for candidates applying for Customer-Facing roles, it is determined that allowing the candidate to work without vaccination would cause an undue burden to the Company, the candidate will be ineligible for hire or transfer, or any offer of employment or transfer (if applicable) will be revoked. Please note that notwithstanding the approval of any reasonable accommodation, the Company reserves the right to monitor, modify, or revoke any such accommodation if it is determined, following dialog with the employee, that the accommodation is no longer effective or results in an undue burden to the Company.

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

US and Puerto Rico Residents Only:

Our company is committed to inclusion, ensuring that candidates can engage in a hiring process that exhibits their true capabilities. Please click here if you need an accommodation during the application or hiring process.

For more information about personal rights under Equal Employment Opportunity, visit:

EEOC Poster

EEOC GINA Supplement​

OFCCP EEO Supplement

Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination

We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing diverse, talented, and committed people together. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when diverse ideas come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively. We are an equal opportunity employer, committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace.

Residents of Colorado:

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Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.

Employee Status:

Relocation:

VISA Sponsorship:

Travel Requirements:

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Shift:

Valid Driving License:

Hazardous Material(s):

Number of Openings:

Requisition ID:R189181