Director, Automation & Data Engineering

October 15, 2026

Hybrid

Head

Paris, Montpellier

Indeed

Also worth knowing

Includes on-call duty
English is required

Description

A B2B software scale-up building a cloud platform for clinical next-generation sequencing analysis, used by 170+ customers across 32 countries in cancer diagnostics, rare disease diagnosis, pharmacogenomics and newborn screening. The Director, Automation & Data Engineering leads one of three foundational Platform teams within the CTO organization, building the BI platform, the clinical data curation engine, the automation layer and the API gateway. The role splits roughly 50% platform product ownership, 30% strategic customer engineering and 20% team leadership of a five-person team

Responsibilities

Build internal products powering operational excellence and customer success: BI platform, clinical data curation engine, automation layer and API gateway
Architect and evolve data pipelines feeding internal analytics dashboards (platform usage metrics, customer TAT analysis, unit economics)
Own the ETL infrastructure that aggregates and curates clinical knowledge databases (ClinVar, gnomAD, population databases, gene panels) with ISO 13485 auditability
Lead development of the customer-facing automation engine with N8N workflow orchestration, LIMS connectors, HL7/FHIR interfaces, file transfer automation and analysis triggering APIs
Treat APIs as products: ensure comprehensive documentation, SDKs, sandbox environments and self-service integration tooling
Own internal admin tools supporting customer management and operational workflows
Act as pre-sales technical expert presenting integration architectures to CTOs, IT Directors and Lab Managers during enterprise sales cycles
Design solution architectures for strategic accounts requiring custom LIMS integrations, HL7/FHIR interfaces or complex workflow automation
Oversee technical onboarding for automation platform customers from contract signature to production go-live, coordinating with Customer Success on SLA commitments
Channel customer implementation learnings back into platform capabilities, turning bespoke solutions into self-service features
Lead and develop 5 direct reports including Senior Bioinformatician, Senior Data Engineer, Automation Engineers and prospective nearshore resources
Orchestrate multiple parallel workstreams, balance build vs support work and ensure predictable delivery cadence
Define engineering standards, Definition of Done and incident response protocols, ensuring compliance with ISO 13485 and ISO 27001 for platform tooling
Recruit, onboard and develop engineering talent, define career paths and technical excellence standards
Manage team operations: sprint planning, code reviews, technical documentation, on-call rotations, incident post-mortems
Collaborate with Deputy CTO on CRD platform integration gaps and migration planning
Partner with Platform Infrastructure Director on data storage, compute resources and observability infrastructure
Work with VP Engineering to ensure platform capabilities serve FullStack team needs and reduce their cognitive load
Engage with CPO and Product Owners to understand internal product requirements from stream-aligned teams
Ensure all platform tooling meets medical device software quality standards (IEC 62304) and information security requirements (ISO 27001)

Requirements

6-8 years of software engineering experience with focus on Data Engineering, Backend Development, ETL/Data Pipelines or Platform Engineering
Proven team leadership experience: 3+ years managing engineers (hiring, mentoring, performance management)
Strong proficiency in Python (data processing, automation, API development) and SQL (PostgreSQL preferred)
Deep expertise in data pipelines, ETL architecture and workflow orchestration (Airflow or equivalent, N8N or similar)
Cloud infrastructure experience on AWS, comfortable with Docker and Kubernetes
Data engineering fundamentals: ETL pipeline design, data warehousing concepts, data quality and validation frameworks
Integration experience with REST APIs and HL7/FHIR standards; LIMS integration background highly valued
B2B SaaS or HealthTech experience preferred, understanding of enterprise customer needs in regulated industries
Customer-facing capability: presenting technical solutions to CTOs, IT Directors and Lab Managers, translating complex concepts for non-technical stakeholders
Regulatory awareness of ISO 13485, ISO 27001, GDPR or similar compliance frameworks is a strong plus
Bioinformatics literacy is nice-to-have: basic understanding of NGS data (VCFs, FASTQs), reference genome versions (hg19/hg38), clinical genomics workflows — can be learned on the job
Experience building internal developer platforms or tooling consumed by other engineers
Strong API design skills: RESTful principles, documentation-first approach, SDK development
Understanding of BI/analytics infrastructure: data modeling, metrics definition, dashboard design
Integration patterns experience: N8N or similar workflow tools, LIMS connectors, HL7/FHIR interfaces, file-based integrations
Cloud-native development with AWS services (S3, Lambda, RDS, ECS) and infrastructure-as-code mindset
Knowledge of data quality frameworks: validation, lineage tracking, error handling, monitoring
Product-minded engineering: treats internal tools as products with users, roadmaps and success metrics, prioritizes reusability and self-service
Platform team mindset: understands Team Topologies principles and reduces cognitive load for stream-aligned teams
Stakeholder management: bridges technical teams with business stakeholders in architecture and commercial discussions
Strategic thinking: balances short-term customer needs with long-term platform scalability
Fluent English required (written and spoken); French helpful but not required
Scale-up adaptability: thrives in fast-paced environments, comfortable with ambiguity and changing priorities