Job Description
We are an innovative, global healthcare leader committed to improving health and well-being in 140 countries around the world. Our product categories include heart and respiratory health, diabetes, infectious diseases, consumer products and women’s health. We aspire to be the best healthcare company in the world and are dedicated to providing innovative solutions for tomorrow.
The Associate Director will provide strategic leadership and end-to-end operational oversight for Infrastructure, Release, and DevOps functions across Digital Human Health. This highly visible senior role requires a pragmatic, technically grounded leader who can shape strategy, drive operational excellence, engage global stakeholders, lead high-performing teams, and manage financial priorities effectively.
Responsibilities
- Define, govern, and execute the strategic roadmap for DHH infrastructure, DevOps, and release management across global product teams.
- Prepare and present executive summaries, business cases, and capability roadmaps to leadership, ensuring clear visibility into operational health and strategic priorities.
- Collaborate closely with Global Technology and Product teams to align engineering strategy with business execution, serving as the primary contact and escalation point for Infrastructure, DevOps, and Release Management services.
- Define and govern enterprise release management processes, standards, controls, planning, orchestration, and deployment automation to ensure timely, secure, and low-risk deployments.
- Lead multi-cloud infrastructure services and provide strategic oversight for Salesforce and Veeva Vault platform operations, including complex multi-org strategies, environment management, governance, and environment synchronization.
- Establish and promote DevOps strategies, frameworks, and best practices across product teams; drive adoption of automated CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), deployment automation, and operational process automation to improve delivery velocity, scalability, efficiency, and reliability.
- Lead, coach, and develop a diverse, global team of technical professionals, fostering a culture of operational excellence, continuous learning, and cross-functional collaboration.
- Lead budget planning, tracking, and justification for the squad. Categorize work effectively for budget allocation, including detailing non-funded works, operational support, and innovation initiatives.
- Oversee strategic vendor partnerships, ensuring optimal resource allocation, SLA compliance, and cost efficiency.
- Pioneer the adoption of AI-native operations to modernize ways of working and improve software delivery efficiency.
- Evaluate emerging technologies, cloud services, AI capabilities, and engineering tools to improve reliability, scalability, availability, and delivery outcomes.
- Ensure compliance with enterprise architecture, security, regulatory, and operational standards while overseeing infrastructure performance, observability, and operational resilience.
- Operate with a pragmatic, hands-on leadership approach, with the ability to dive into technical details when needed to unblock issues and support effective decision-making.
Qualifications
Required
- Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related technology field.
- A minimum of 7+ years of senior-level experience in Cloud Infrastructure, DevOps, and Release Management, with a proven track record in formal people leadership, coaching, and developing technical professionals.
- Demonstrated ability to manage departmental budgets, justify operational estimates, and present strategic business cases to executive leadership.
- Extensive knowledge of AWS core services, including networking, Security Groups, subnets, IAM roles and policies, Transit Gateways, Load Balancing, Lambda, EC2, and KMS, as well as Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform.
- Strong expertise in Salesforce (Sales/Service/Experience Cloud) and Veeva Vault environment management, release processes, and governance.
- Proficiency in modern DevOps practices, CI/CD tools such as GitHub and GitHub Actions, containerization, infrastructure observability, and agile product development principles.
- AI-native mindset with daily use of AI assistants and agentic workflows to accelerate work, improve decision-making, and drive operational efficiencies.
- Excellent verbal and written English communication skills; proven ability to synthesize complex technical details into clear, executive-level narratives.
What we offer
- Exciting work in a great team, global projects, international environment
- Opportunity to learn and grow professionally within the company globally
- Hybrid working model, flexible role pattern
- Competitive salary & incentive pay
- Pension and health insurance contributions
- Internal reward system and referral scheme
- 5 weeks annual leave, 5 sick days, 15 days of certified sick leave paid above statutory requirements annually, 40 paid hours annually for volunteering activities, 12 weeks of parental contribution
- Cafeteria for tax free benefits according to your choice (meal vouchers, sport, culture, health, travel, etc.), Multisport Card
- Vodafone, Raiffeisen Bank, Foodora, and discount programmes
- Up-to-date laptop and iPhone
- Parking in the garage, showers, refreshments, massage chairs, library, music corner
Ready to take up the challenge? Apply now!
Know anybody who might be interested? Refer this job!
Required Skills:
Cloud Based Services, Cloud Infrastructure, Collaboration, Infrastructure Engineering, Leadership, Software Development
Preferred Skills:
Current Employees apply HERE
Current Contingent Workers apply HERE
Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.
Employee Status:
Regular
Relocation:
No relocation
VISA Sponsorship:
No
Travel Requirements:
10%
Flexible Work Arrangements:
Hybrid
Shift:
1st - Day
Valid Driving License:
No
Hazardous Material(s):
n/a
Job Posting End Date:
09/1/2026
*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.
