Engineering Manager

Overview

About Certara

Certara accelerates the potential of bringing medicines to market and to patients using biosimulation software, technology, and services to transform traditional drug discovery and development. Our clients include more than 2,400 biopharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, and regulatory agencies across 70 countries.

Our goal is to enable the life sciences industry’s use of data, modeling, and analytics to make better decisions across the various phases of discovery and drug development. Our software and scientists incorporate modern advances in scientific understanding, drug development experience, data analysis, and AI resulting in significant opportunities to decrease the cost and increase the probability of success for new drug approval and commercialization.

Phoenix Cloud helps PK/PD scientists turn complex study data into publication-ready decisions. We are hiring an Engineering Manager for hands-on people leadership and delivery ownership on a 7–10 person analytics and reporting team. The role is based in Budapest (hybrid); your direct reports are primarily in Europe, and you will work with colleagues across time zones. You will spend meaningful time on people leadership and delivery planning, stay technically credible enough to review work and settle technical debates, and own cross-functional delivery that spans product, QA, and customer-facing implementations. This is not a PM-only or hands-off EM role: you will be in the operational weeds in year one.

At a glance: First-line Engineering Manager · 7–10 direct reports · Reports to Engineering Director· Budapest-based, hybrid · Growth hire to restore sustainable engineering management coverage.

About the team

The team builds cloud-native modules within Phoenix Cloud, Certara's platform for PK/PD analysis, from data in to publication-ready outputs. Work spans analytics, insights, and reporting capabilities such as publication-ready visualisations, report authoring, and the workflow required to bring it all together. The team works in a cross-functional agile model with product managers, testers, and domain experts. Software ships under validation standards expected by regulated life-sciences customers. Technical decisions are made by the people closest to the work; the engineering manager's job is to develop those people, keep delivery predictable, and step in on architecture and cross-team alignment when needed. Expect roughly one quarter of your time on technical review and judgment, with the balance across people leadership, stakeholder alignment, and planning.

Responsibilities

This is not a PM-only or roadmap-owner role, but you will broker priorities and settle technical debates when delivery is on the line.

• People: Develop and lead 7–10 software engineers across Europe, with emphasis on 1:1s, performance feedback, documented growth plans, and input on future hiring needs.
• Delivery: Own release coordination, tier-1 Phoenix Cloud implementation escalations, and cross-functional prioritization with Product Owner(s) and Test Engineer(s) when projects compete for the same resources.
• Platform discipline: Foster technical decision-making on the team (and make final calls when needed), participate in ISO certification activities with quality and compliance partners, and drive portfolio improvements such as AWS cost optimization, internal training, engineering dashboards, and consistency across reporting products.

Qualifications

Must have

• Experience leading a team of 5 or more software engineers, including regular 1:1s, clear performance feedback, and documented development plans

• Demonstrated ability to build consensus across departments under competing priorities

• Progressive engineering leadership experience with credible technical judgment: code review, escalation triage, and architectural tradeoffs — comfortable operating in quality-conscious release environments (regulated experience a plus; not only historical IC work)

You'll need to quickly get good at

• Hiring and developing engineers on distributed teams across Europe

• Participating in ISO certification activities alongside quality and compliance partners

• Coordinating release and implementation work across product, QA, and customer-facing delivery

You might be a fit if

• You kept standards (reviews, feedback, incident follow-through) when delivery pressure was constant

• You have owned release coordination, implementation delivery, or customer escalation paths, not only sprint facilitation

• You are comfortable making technical tradeoffs in regulated life-sciences software where accuracy and validation matter

Helpful context, not required

You do not need a PK/PD or Lifesciences background. You will ramp faster if you have shipped regulated software, worked near clinical or scientific users, or have background in finance, life sciences quality, or regulatory software. Experience with analytics, reporting, or data-visualization products on a multi-tenant cloud platform, or exposure to AI-assisted product features, is a plus but not expected.

Certara bases all employment-related decision on merit, taking into consideration qualifications, skills, achievement, and performance. We treat all applicants and employees without regard to personal characteristics such as race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, nationality, marital status, pregnancy, physical or mental condition, genetic information, military service, or other characteristic protected by law.