Principal, Data Engineering

We foster an inclusive culture and are looking for diverse, talented leaders to join Alcon. The Principal Data Engineer is a senior technical leader responsible for designing, building, and evolving scalable, reliable, and secure enterprise data platforms and data products.

This role provides hands-on technical leadership across data architecture, data pipelines, cloud platforms, data quality, governance, and engineering practices. The Principal Data Engineer partners closely with Data Science, BI/Analytics, product teams, business stakeholders, and technology teams to ensure trusted, well-engineered data is available for analytics, AI, machine learning, reporting, and operational use cases.

The role is intended to be a technical leadership position rather than a people-management position, with significant responsibility for architecture decisions, engineering standards, mentoring, and solving the organization’s most complex data engineering challenges.

In this role, a typical day will include:

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Serve as a technical leader for enterprise data engineering solutions.
• Design scalable data architectures, data pipelines, integration patterns, and reusable data services.
• Establish engineering standards for data ingestion, transformation, storage, orchestration, testing, monitoring, and deployment.
• Lead technical design reviews and guide teams toward scalable solutions rather than short-term fixes.
• Evaluate emerging data technologies and recommend practical adoption where they provide measurable value.

Data Pipeline Engineering

• Design and develop robust batch and streaming data pipelines across enterprise data sources.
• Build reusable frameworks that improve development speed, consistency, observability, and maintainability.
• Optimize data pipelines for performance, scalability, reliability, and cost.
• Establish monitoring and alerting to proactively identify pipeline and data-quality issues.
• Improve pipeline reliability, freshness, and data-quality outcomes, which are specifically identified as engineering measures in your current organization material.

AI & Analytics Enablement

• Partner with Data Scientists and analytics teams to create reliable, AI-ready data foundations.
• Develop data pipelines and curated datasets supporting machine learning, forecasting, optimization, Generative AI, and advanced analytics.
• Support production AI solutions through appropriate data architecture, lineage, quality controls, monitoring, and reusable data services.
• Work closely with ML/AI engineering teams to enable scalable model development and deployment.

• Bachelor’s Degree or Equivalent years of directly related experience (or high school +13 yrs; Assoc.+9 yrs; M.S.+2 yrs; PhD+0 yrs)
• The ability to fluently read, write, understand, and communicate in English
• 5 Years of Relevant Experience

Preferred Qualifications:

• Power BI
• Business intelligence

• Lead alongside high-performing teams in a culture that values collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Grow your career through leadership development and meaningful enterprise impact.
• Join Alcon’s mission to provide outstanding, innovative products and solutions to improve sight, improve lives, and grow your career!
• Alcon provides robust benefits package including health, life, retirement, flexible time off, and much more!

See your impact at: alcon.com/careers

At Alcon, we are driven by the meaningful work we do to help people see brilliantly. We innovate boldly, champion progress, and act with speed as the global leader in eye care. Here, you’ll be recognized for your commitment and contributions and see your career like never before. Together, we go above and beyond to make an impact on the lives of our patients and customers. Are you ready to join us?