Senior Information Architect – Research & Development

About the role

AstraZeneca is looking for a Senior Enterprise Information Architect for its Research & Development practice, based in Barcelona. The role defines how data becomes connected knowledge across scientific, clinical and operational domains, leading the design and governance of ontologies, taxonomies, canonical models and metadata standards so that R&D knowledge is discoverable, interoperable and AI-ready. It works with technology and R&D leaders to connect business capabilities end to end.

Key responsibilities

• Semantic architecture leadership: define ontology, semantic, canonical and metadata assets and shape architectural scope and ways of working.
• Enterprise modelling and standards: drive conceptual, logical, physical and semantic modelling and maintain coherent blueprints.
• Ontology and taxonomy stewardship: define and curate ontologies, taxonomies, controlled vocabularies and semantic layers.
• Transform project-specific models into reusable enterprise semantic and context assets with standards, governance, tooling and adoption pathways.
• Champion FAIR and TRUST data principles and align outputs to a Data Mesh operating model.
• Partner with business leaders on information and semantic designs supporting strategy and scientific priorities.
• Own enterprise IA in major change programmes and assure designs through blueprints and design reviews.
• Select architectures for reporting, analytics, data science and AI/ML use cases, including knowledge-graph use cases.
• Lead architectural governance, develop architectural decisions through forums and councils, and coach teams on semantic literacy.
• Support data integration architecture and enforce standard data element names, characteristics and domains.
• Work with the Data Office to embed governance in IA builds using metrics such as master data consumption, classification metadata, ontology adoption and semantic coverage.
• Specify and manage work packages and coordinate demand and recharge.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent years of experience in Computer Science, Data Management or a relevant scientific field.
• Experience leading enterprise data platform and information architectural thinking and its practical application.
• Experience in conceptual, logical and semantic data modelling, including ontology and taxonomy design.
• Experience with information and data regulatory governance (e.g. GxP, privacy, data ethics).
• Experience in known IT architectural patterns and ways of working (e.g. FAIR data, TRUST, Data Mesh).
• Understanding of ontologies, semantic layers, knowledge graphs and canonical models, and of hybrid cloud containerization strategies.
• Desirable: post-graduate degree, extensive senior IA experience, agile data definition scrums, Data Mesh familiarity, pharma industry experience, and experience building semantic modelling communities of practice.

Required skills

• Ontology and semantic modelling tools such as OWL, RDF, SKOS and SHACL.
• Knowledge of industry and pharma standards such as CDISC, IDMP, SNOMED CT, MedDRA, LOINC, UMLS, ChEBI, OMOP, HL7 FHIR and CDISC SDTM.
• Ability to lead semantic modelling transformation, including operating-model and governance design, change leadership, facilitation and coaching.

The role expects at least three days per week in the office, with flexibility for individuals.