Sr. Data API Engineer

For 75 years, Charles River employees have worked together to assist in the discovery, development and safe manufacture of new drug therapies. When you join our family, you will have a significant impact on the health and well-being of people across the globe. Whether your background is in life sciences, finance, IT, sales or another area, your skills will play an important role in the work we perform. In return, we'll help you build a career that you can feel passionate about.

At Charles River Laboratories, we're transforming how we work by harnessing the power of AI, data, and digital innovation to accelerate the discovery and development of life-saving therapies. Our vision is to embed artificial intelligence and advanced analytics across every stage of our scientific and operational workflows—empowering our teams with smarter tools, seamless data, and actionable insights to deliver client-centric services and solutions that better serve our customers and, ultimately, improve patients' lives.

As a Senior Data Engineer – API within our Enterprise Data and Analytics team, you'll be a key driver of our digital transformation. We're looking for a technically skilled and forward-thinking engineer who thrives on building scalable, secure, and high-performance data APIs that power intelligent applications across the enterprise. In this role, you'll lead the design and implementation of modern data services that enable seamless integration, unlock real-time insights, and support advanced analytics and generative AI initiatives. You'll collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver solutions that enhance customer value, streamline operations, and accelerate scientific discovery. This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of data engineering at Charles River and help redefine how we deliver science and innovation to the world.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and maintain RESTful and GraphQL APIs to support scalable, high-performance applications.

• Collaborate with data engineers and developers to create seamless integrations between APIs, data pipelines, and web applications.

• Build and maintain applications using frameworks like Java Spring Boot, Hibernate, Python Fast API, and ReactJS.

• Ensure system scalability, security, and reliability by implementing best practices in multi-threading, concurrency, and microservices architecture.

• Drive architectural decisions to optimize performance across application, data, and infrastructure domains.

• Develop and deploy solutions on Azure, utilizing tools like SQL Server, Redis, App Services, and API Management.

• Create and maintain test automation frameworks to ensure data quality and service reliability.

• Mentor junior engineers and foster a collaborative team environment.

Essential Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in computer engineering, Computer Science or related discipline, Master's Degree preferred

• 7+ years of software development experience in Big Data

• 7+ years of experience in modern programming languages - Java, Java-based frameworks (Spring, Maven), Python

• 3+ Years of experience in application, data, and infrastructure architecture disciplines

• 3+ years of experience with multi-threading, concurrency, and highly scalable Microservices and REST web Services

• Ability to work collaboratively in teams and develop meaningful relationships to achieve common goals

• Extensive experience with message driven software patterns such as Service Bus, Kafka, Tibco, EMS, and MQ

Preferred Skills:

• Experience working with other public cloud technologies Azure, AWS, GCP

• Strong communication skills to effectively present complex technical solutions to business and technical stakeholders.

• Experience in scripting languages (e.g., JavaScript, PowerShell, shell scripting, Regex).

• Experience building and supporting AL/ML software solutions

• Prior experience in the Life Sciences industry or working with data and analytics in a similar domain.

• Knowledge of test automation tools to validate data accuracy and system reliability.

About Corporate Functions 

The Corporate Functions provide operational support across Charles River in areas such as Human Resources, Finance, IT, Legal, Sales, Quality Assurance, Marketing, and Corporate Development. They partner with their colleagues across the company to develop and drive strategies and to set global standards. The functions are essential to providing a bridge between strategic vision and operational readiness, to ensure ongoing functional innovation and capability improvement.

About Charles River

Charles River is an early-stage contract research organization (CRO). We have built upon our foundation of laboratory animal medicine and science to develop a diverse portfolio of discovery and safety assessment services, both Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) and non-GLP, to support clients from target identification through preclinical development. Charles River also provides a suite of products and services to support our clients' clinical laboratory testing needs and manufacturing activities. Utilizing this broad portfolio of products and services enables our clients to create a more flexible drug development model, which reduces their costs, enhances their productivity and effectiveness to increase speed to market.

With over 20,000 employees within 110 facilities in over 20 countries around the globe, we are strategically positioned to coordinate worldwide resources and apply multidisciplinary perspectives in resolving our client's unique challenges. Our client base includes global pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, government agencies and hospitals and academic institutions around the world. 

At Charles River, we are passionate about our role in improving the quality of people's lives. Our mission, our excellent science and our strong sense of purpose guide us in all that we do, and we approach each day with the knowledge that our work helps to improve the health and well-being of many across the globe. We have proudly worked on 80% of the drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the past five years.

We're committed to providing benefits that elevate your quality of life.  Based on your position these may include:  bonus/incentives based on performance, 401K, paid time off, stock purchase program, Health and wellness coverage, employee and family wellbeing support programs, and work life balance flexibility.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Charles River is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to providing equal employment opportunities for all qualified applicants and employees without regard to race, color, sex, religion, national origin, ancestry, age, mental or physical disability, family status, pregnancy, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.

It is unlawful in some states (including Massachusetts) to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.

If you are interested in applying to Charles River Laboratories and need special assistance or an accommodation due to a disability to complete any forms or to otherwise participate in the resume submission process, please contact a member of our Human Resources team by sending an e-mail message to This contact is for accommodation requests for individuals with disabilities only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.

For more information, please visit