Data & AI Architect – Life Sciences

About The Role

We are looking for a Manager / Senior Data & AI Architect to join our Barcelona team and help us grow one of BIP Iberia's strategic areas: the application of Data, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence within Life Sciences.

This is not a pure architecture role. We are looking for someone who combines strong technical depth with business understanding, client-facing skills and a pre-sales/commercial mindset. Someone who can design a robust architecture, defend it with a client, understand the business problem behind it and guide the team until the solution is successfully delivered and operational.

The role will be part of BIP's Global Data & AI team, with a strong focus on working closely with our local teams in Barcelona and across Spain, while collaborating with colleagues and specialists across Portugal, Italy and other BIP geographies.

Your mission

• Act as a Data & AI reference for Life Sciences, connecting strategy, business and technology.
• You will be involved from early client conversations and pre-sales through architecture definition, delivery and the evolution of production solutions.
• You will also help build capabilities, reusable assets, propositions and references that strengthen our position in the Life Sciences market.

What you will do

• Design end-to-end Data, Analytics and AI architectures covering data platforms, lakehouse, integration, governance, advanced analytics, Machine Learning, GenAI and AI agents.
• Translate Life Sciences business needs into concrete, scalable, secure and measurable technology solutions.
• Act as a trusted technical advisor for CIOs, CDOs, Data & AI leaders, business stakeholders and architecture teams.
• Play an active role in pre-sales: discovery, workshops, RFP/RFI responses, estimates, proposals, roadmaps, high-level architectures, demos, PoCs and executive presentations.
• Work jointly with commercial leaders and Partners to identify and mature opportunities, bringing technical credibility and sector knowledge.
• Provide technical leadership to multidisciplinary teams including Data Engineers, Analytics Engineers, Data Scientists, ML Engineers and AI specialists.
• Define architecture standards and patterns across security, integration, observability, MLOps/LLMOps, governance and data quality.
• Support solutions through production, ensuring operability, performance, security, cost control and long-term scalability.
• Contribute to the growth of the Data & AI practice in Barcelona and to BIP's international Life Sciences collaboration.
• Mentor junior colleagues and raise the technical bar through design reviews, best practices and knowledge sharing.

Industry knowledge -- Life Sciences

• Relevant experience or strong knowledge of the Life Sciences sector is important. The successful candidate should understand key business processes, industry challenges and the regulatory context in which clients operate.
• Experience in Pharma, Biotech, MedTech, Healthcare or related environments.
• Understanding of Data & AI use cases across R&D, clinical, medical affairs, commercial, market access, supply chain, manufacturing, quality or patient/healthcare analytics.
• Ability to work with sensitive data and regulated environments, with awareness of privacy, traceability, quality, governance and compliance principles.
• Knowledge of scientific, clinical, commercial or healthcare data ecosystems will be highly valued.

Essential Requirements

• Strong experience, ideally 7 years, across Data, Analytics, Cloud or AI, with increasing responsibility in architecture and/or technical leadership.
• Proven experience or strong domain knowledge in Life Sciences, with an understanding of the sector's key business processes, data ecosystems, and regulatory context.
• Proven experience designing modern data solutions: data lake/lakehouse, data warehouse, streaming, APIs and integration, batch and real-time processing, modelling and governance.
• Deep knowledge of at least one major hyperscaler (Azure, AWS or Google Cloud) and the ability to operate in multi-cloud environments.
• Experience with modern data platforms such as Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake, BigQuery or equivalent technologies.
• Strong SQL skills and solid Python knowledge; practical understanding of Spark and distributed architectures.
• Knowledge of AI/ML and GenAI architectures, including LLMs, RAG, agents, vector search, evaluation, guardrails, observability and industrialisation patterns.
• Strong client-facing experience and the ability to communicate complex decisions to both technical and executive audiences.
• Hands‑on experience in technical pre‑sales and in preparing and defending proposals.
• Professional English at a minimum C