Senior Staff Software Engineer, Research Systems

Job Description

Gilead's mission is to discover, develop, and deliver therapies that will improve the lives of patients with life-threatening illnesses worldwide. The **Senior Staff Software Engineer** serves as the primary support and operations lead for Research Informatics services. This role focuses on communication, training, documentation, user support, and operational excellence for systems used across drug discovery. The individual serves as the frontline communication channel for scientists, ensuring requests are addressed efficiently, information is communicated clearly, and platforms are effectively adopted. The position combines user support, departmental communications, training, documentation, and Dotmatics project page administration. The role works closely with scientists, engineers, business analysts, platform owners, and IT to ensure systems remain useful, well-documented, and aligned with scientific needs.

Key Responsibilities

User Support & Request Coordination

• Serve as the frontline communication channel for Research Informatics.
• Monitor, prioritize, and coordinate user requests, questions, and enhancements.
• Coordinate issue resolution with platform teams and other RI staff.
• Escalate issues and communicate status to stakeholders.

Department Communications

• Develop and distribute communications related to Research Informatics platforms, releases, outages, process changes, and training opportunities.
• Manage communication channels, announcements, and distribution lists.
• Coordinate communications for software upgrades and organizational initiatives.
• Maintain visibility of support activities, services, and platform capabilities.

Training & User Enablement

• Lead onboarding for new users.
• Deliver training sessions, workshops, and office hours.
• Create and maintain training materials, reference guides, and self-service resources.

Documentation & Knowledge Management

• Maintain Confluence spaces, Jira resources, and departmental knowledge bases.
• Create and update SOPs, user guides, FAQs, workflow documentation, and training materials.
• Ensure documentation remains current and aligned with supported processes.

Dotmatics Project Page Administration

• Create and manage project spaces, templates, metadata, dashboards, and project content.
• Configure and maintain Dotmatics project pages following departmental standards.

Request Tracking & Operational Coordination

• Manage support activities through Jira.
• Track incidents, requests, enhancements, and operational tasks.
• Prepare operational metrics and adoption reports.
• Coordinate activities across RI, IT, vendors, and scientific stakeholders.

Platform Operations

• Support testing, validation, and deployment activities.
• Participate in change management and operational readiness reviews.
• Coordinate user acceptance testing and communications.
• Support vendor interactions and continuous improvement of support processes.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 6+ years relevant experience; OR
• Master's degree with 4+ years relevant experience; OR
• PhD with relevant experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting scientific software platforms or research informatics systems.
• Experience with ELNs, registration systems, scientific databases, or research applications.
• Experience with Jira, Confluence, and knowledge-management platforms.
• Strong customer-service, communication, and problem-solving skills.

The focus at this level is execution, coordination, communication, training, and operational excellence. Promotion Indicator: Advancement from this grade occurs when an individual is measured primarily by the services, standards, processes, and organizational improvements they create rather than the activities they personally perform. People Leader Accountabilities:

• Create Inclusion - knowing the business value of diverse teams, modeling inclusion, and embedding the value of diversity in the way they manage their teams.
• Develop Talent - understand the skills, experience, aspirations and potential of their employees and coach them on current performance and future potential. They ensure employees are receiving the feedback and insight needed to grow, develop and realize their purpose.
• Empower Teams - connect the team to the organization by aligning goals, purpose, and organizational objectives, and holding them to account. They provide the support needed to remove barriers and connect their team to the broader ecosystem.