Chief Data Officer & Co-Founder - Pharma, MarTech, Generative AI
High Alpha Innovation partners with the world's leading organizations to innovate through startup creation. Part strategy consultancy and part venture studio, our team is a diverse mix of highly experienced company builders, designers, and strategists who work with corporate and university partners to source, launch, and invest in venture studios and advantaged startups.
We are seeking a world-class startup entrepreneur for the role of CDO and Co-Founder for our newest company, which is currently in stealth mode (hereafter "StealthCo"). In the pharmaceutical industry, there is a need to address the long-standing marketing, legal, and regulatory bottleneck. StealthCo will address this problem by creating an intelligent software platform. This platform will support FDA-regulated companies throughout their new product launches and ongoing promotional campaigns. As the product scales, AI/ML will be utilized to generate compliant content based on claims libraries, market trends, FDA data, and clinical trial results.
You'll be supported by the High Alpha Innovation team, who have seen exponential growth across a variety of SaaS platforms in multiple industries with successful exits along with the deep subject matter expertise, network, and credentials of the advising concept ideator.
As the CDO and Co-Founder, you will be responsible for building a big, important, durable business from the ground up. As the CDO you will work to build the MVP, hire a world-class team of data scientists and software developers, and partner with the CEO to define the product roadmap and go-to-market strategy. This is a unique opportunity to be a creator, builder, and innovator to build a world-class product from scratch. You will also be responsible for the overall data lifecycle and governance, ensuring the responsible use of StealthCo customer data.
What You'll Do:
• Serve as a co-founder and executive partner to the CEO assisting in shaping corporate strategy and company vision while participating in building conviction in the market, with investors, and customers
• Plan and define the architecture of the platform, and work closely with Engineering to create the MVP
• Employ a phased approach in designing and refining engineering architecture as the product expands
• Define and execute the overall data strategy, aligning it with the company's vision and goals
• Establish a roadmap for data acquisition, integration, quality, and analytics for MVP and beyond
• Build, lead, and grow the data science and engineering team dedicated to the ongoing advancement of the SaaS product
• Lead and participate in the design and development of AI/ML models to analyze complex clinical and pharmaceutical data
• Develop and support a culture of continuous improvement and best practices
• Develop and implement robust data governance and security protocols to ensure compliance with healthcare regulations (e.g., HIPAA), data protection laws, and industry standards
• Develop and maintain a Lean/Agile startup culture maturing with scale, and foster a high level of employee motivation, performance, and commitment
• Design and develop clean, scalable, and maintainable code
• Work with modern languages, frameworks, and tools to build a cutting-edge platform leveraging the most effective and modern technologies
• Execute continuous deployment practices, including automated testing and continuous integration
What You'll Need:
• Demonstrated experience in building early-stage SaaS products and leading high-performing engineering teams
• A firm understanding of health/legal compliance, data security, and leveraging ML/AI technology
• Industry familiarity in healthcare ideally with pharmaceutical companies
• Extensive experience in managing and analyzing pharmaceutical clinical data, such as claims, clinical trial results, and regulatory submissions
• 10+ years of professional software development experience, including hands-on software engineering/architecture experience for commercial technology or technology-enabled services companies
• 5+ years of experience managing or leading a software development team
• Experience building and managing a team of remote data engineers, data scientists, and/or software developers
• Hands-on experience with programming languages (Python, R) and data manipulation tools (SQL, Jupyter Notebook, Pandas)
• Deep experience with various software development methodologies and approaches, with an appreciation of how and when to employ each
• Familiarity with technologies, frameworks, and tools used across the entire stack
• Systems Design/ Architecture experience with excellent analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills
• Bachelor's Degree in computer science or related field, or equivalent experience
• Understanding of data privacy and security in a highly regulated environment (healthcare, finance) with attention to HIPAA, HITRUST, or SOC2 complianc