AbbVie Posted August 11, 2026

Data Engineer, PDS&T CMC

North Chicago, IL Full-time
Data & Digital

AbbVie is the source of truth for this posting and owns the application process. We surface normalized context and market comparison you won't find on the original listing.

About this opportunity

Company Description

About AbbVie

AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology and neuroscience - and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at  www.abbvie.com . Follow @abbvie on  LinkedIn,   Facebook ,  Instagram ,  X  and  YouTube.

Job Description

While the AI innovation race in Biopharma is focused on Drug discovery, Product Development/ CMC represents the next barrier/ bottleneck. The complexity of biological systems, the rigor of regulatory expectations, the pace of pipeline growth, and the enormous value at stake make this one of the highest-leverage domains for applied data science and AI in the entire pharmaceutical value chain.

We here at BTS - PDST, are building a dedicated, AI-native team that is driving cutting edge programs across early stage, late stage and commercial product development to accelerate E2E product development and launch, maximize yields of block buster products. Through our deep collaboration with PDST scientists we are boldly reimagining how AbbVie can bring our pipeline products and lifesaving drugs to patients faster, safer and in cost effective manner fueled by AI.

This position is a highly technical, AI-native role responsible for designing, building, and operating production-grade data pipelines and data products that power AI/ML, analytics, and automation across AbbVie's CMC and manufacturing ecosystem.

This role is embedded inside PDST and works at the frontier of pharmaceutical data engineering. You will integrate and harmonize data from the full spectrum of manufacturing and development systems, including MES, historians, LIMS, QMS, ERP, and instrument platforms, and transform it into reliable, governed, semantically rich data assets that data scientists, process engineers, and AI systems can actually use.

Enterprise-scale scope: Enterprise-scale biologics portfolio spanning clinical, commercial, and lifecycle stages

Building AI playbook for the future: First-in-AbbVie and first-in-biologics analytical approaches; you build the AI playbook for the future

Growth and Impact: Direct impact on regulatory submissions, commercial readiness, and manufacturing decisions through deep cross-functional exposure to manufacturing, quality, regulatory, and scientific leadership

Mission: Every model you build helps ensure safe, reliable medicines reach patients at scale

Responsibilities:

Data Ingestion & Integration

Design and implement scalable, robust data ingestion pipelines that connect CMC and manufacturing source systems, including MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems), process historians, LIMS, QMS, ERP platforms, and instrument data sources, to centralized and federated data environments.

Build connectors, adapters, and integration layers that handle the heterogeneous data formats, protocols, and latency profiles characteristic of pharmaceutical manufacturing environments.

Support both batch and real-time/streaming data patterns, selecting appropriate architectures based on use case requirements.

Data Harmonization & Semantic Modeling 

Develop and maintain harmonized data models and ontologies that bring consistency to CMC and manufacturing data across sites, systems, and modalities.

Execute semantic mapping efforts that align source system fields, units, and identifiers to enterprise data standards and scientific meaning.

Collaborate with process scientists, analytical chemists, and manufacturing engineers to ensure data models accurately reflect domain reality.

Data Quality, Observability & Governance 

Implement automated data quality controls, validation frameworks, and anomaly detection mechanisms across pipeline layers.

Build and maintain data lineage documentation and metadata infrastructure, enabling full traceability from source system to AI model input.

Establish pipeline observability practices, monitoring, alerting, SLA tracking, to ensure data product reliability in production.

Support data governance practices aligned with GxP requirements, 21 CFR Part 11, and AbbVie data standards.

AI/ML Enablement & Data Product Development 

Architect and deliver governed, versioned, reusable data products purpose-built for AI/ML consumption, including feature stores, curated datasets, and vector-ready data layers for RAG and LLM applications.

Partner closely with data scientists, ML engineers, and process modelers to understand model data requirements and translate them into reliable, scalable data infrastructure.

Accelerate AI program delivery by eliminating data bottlenecks, not by workarounds, but by solving root causes structurally.

Platform & Operational Enablement 

Contribute to the design and evolution of PDST's cloud-based data platform, including lakehouse architecture, data cataloging, access control, and compute infrastructure.

Write and maintain infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, and automated testing frameworks for data systems.

Support platform onboarding of new CMC data domains and manufacturing sites, ensuring consistent application of standards and patterns.

Provide operational support for production data pipelines, maintaining uptime and data freshness commitments.

Stakeholder Engagement & Scientific Leadership 

Influence technical decision-making without formal authority, earning trust through scientific rigor, transparent methodology, and demonstrated business impact.

Qualifications

Required:

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, Software Engineering, Bioinformatics, or a closely related technical field plus 2 years’ experience OR Master’s Degree with 0 years' experience.

Respective years of hands-on experience designing and building enterprise-grade data pipelines, integration workflows, and data products in complex, multi-source environments.

Expert-level proficiency in Python for data engineering tasks, pipeline development, transformation logic, data validation, and automation.

Strong SQL skills across modern analytical and transactional databases; comfort with both ANSI SQL and platform-specific dialects.

Demonstrated experience with cloud data platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and modern data stack components, including tools such as dbt, Spark, Airflow, Databricks, Snowflake, or equivalents.

Develop ETL/ELT pipelines using tools such as Informatica, Talend, Apache NiFi, and cloud-native services (e.g., AWS Glue, Azure Data Factory).

Implement master data management (MDM), metadata management, and data cataloging solutions to ensure proper data lineage, accessibility, and compliance.

Set and enforce standards for API development and data integration (REST, GraphQL, OData), enabling seamless integration using microservices architectures.

Design logical, physical, and conceptual data models using modeling tools (e.g., Erwin, PowerDesigner, dbt).

Ownership orientation: you define your own problem space, drive solutions to completion, and hold yourself accountable to outcomes, not just outputs.

Solution-architect instinct: you think before you build, consider the full landscape of available approaches, and choose tools based on fit-for-purpose reasoning rather than familiarity or trend.

Scientific integrity: you build models you can explain, defend, and improve, and you apply the same standard to the work of others.

Influence through credibility: you earn the confidence of scientists, engineers, and quality professionals by being right, being clear, and being useful, not by title or volume.

Bias for impact: you are drawn to problems where the stakes are high and the analytical opportunity is real, and you are energized rather than intimidated by ambiguity.

Preferred:

Experience in pharmaceutical, biotech, or other regulated life sciences manufacturing environments.

Familiarity with GxP data principles, 21 CFR Part 11 compliance, or data integrity requirements in regulated industries.

Prior exposure to manufacturing source systems such as MES, process historians (e.g., OSIsoft PI/AVEVA), LIMS, QMS, or ERP platforms

Experience building data infrastructure for AI/ML programs, including feature engineering pipelines, model training datasets, or vector/embedding data layers for RAG architectures.

Additional Information

Applicable only to applicants applying to a position in any location with pay disclosure requirements under state or local law: ​

The compensation range described below is the range of possible base pay compensation that the Company believes in good faith it will pay for this role at the time of this posting based on the job grade for this position. Individual compensation paid within this range will depend on many factors including geographic location, and we may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future. ​

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off (vacation, holidays, sick), medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.​

This job is eligible to participate in our short-term incentive programs. ​

Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of  any bonus, commission, incentive, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole and absolute discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole and absolute discretion, consistent with applicable law. ​

AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives and serving our community.  Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled.

US & Puerto Rico only - to learn more, visit  https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/equal-employment-opportunity-employer.html

US & Puerto Rico applicants seeking a reasonable accommodation, click here to learn more:

https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/reasonable-accommodations.html

Job details

Seniority
Not listed
Function
Data & Digital
Therapeutic area
Not listed
Location
North Chicago, IL
Employment type
Full-time

How this role compares

Computed from every other active Data & Digital role in our database, not just this employer's listings.

We currently track 292 comparable Data & Digital roles across 41 biopharma companies.

292Comparable roles tracked
273Currently active
41Companies hiring similar roles
20Countries represented

Salary context

59 of 292 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)

Peers share this role's job function. This posting doesn't list a seniority level, so peers aren't narrowed by seniority either -- the range below may span more levels than usual.

This roleSubject $65,500/yr – $125,500/yr
Lowest disclosed · Senior Associate, Metadata Engineering · Pfizer $79,400/yr – $132,400/yr
Peer group range $105,900 – $339,950 (median $198,000)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 292 comparable roles

India112
United States84
France22
Spain16
United Kingdom8
Canada7

+ 14 more countries

Seniority mix

158 of 292 peers have a known seniority level

Senior57
Manager31
Associate Director20
Director16
Principal16
Associate8
Executive/VP7
Senior Director3

Therapeutic area mix

6 of 292 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Immunology3
Oncology2
Ophthalmology1

Similar opportunities

The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.

40%similar
Lilly Indianapolis, Indiana, United States of America
Same function Same country
40%similar
Gilead Sciences, Inc. Foster City, United States Director
Same function Same country
40%similar
Novartis Cambridge (USA), United States
Same function Same country
40%similar
Novartis Cambridge (USA), United States
Same function Same country
40%similar
Novartis Remote Position (USA), United States Director
Same function Same country
40%similar
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) Tarrytown, United States Executive/VP
Same function Same country

How we calculate "similar"

No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.

Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.

40%
Agentic AI Data Engineer - CMC Data Integration
Lilly · Indianapolis, Indiana, United States of America · Seniority not listed
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
40%
AI Scientist – Image Analysis & Digital Pathology
Novartis · Cambridge (USA), United States · Seniority not listed
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
40%
Executive Director, Responsible AI & Enterprise Governance
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) · Tarrytown, United States · Executive/VP
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
40%
Principal Statistical Programmer
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) · Warren, United States · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
Unmatched or unknown dimensions score exactly the same: 0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.