Research Tools Technical Lead

The Research Tools Technical Lead serves as the principal technical leader and application expert for tools overseen by the Research Tools team, including (but not limited to) UCSF's REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) research data management platform, while also providing enterprise-level IT architecture leadership across multiple technical initiatives. This role combines deep technical expertise in research informatics with strategic architecture capabilities, automation implementation, and technical project leadership.

This position operates at the intersection of research support, infrastructure automation, and technical innovation-serving as both the lead administrator for critical research data systems and a staff-level technical leader for cross-functional projects requiring advanced architectural guidance. This role will use AI/LLM driven technologies to accelerate development when possible and sensible, and may deploy or build new AI technologies as part of the growing Research IT footprint in this area.

%

of time

Essential Function (Yes/No)

Key Responsibilities

(To be completed by Supervisor)

40

- Serve as lead and driver for platform availability, data integrity, security compliance, and optimal performance of the UCSF REDCap instances across 24/7 research operations

- Design, implement, and maintain REDCap infrastructure including server architecture, database optimization, module management, API integrations, and additional module deployment and risk analysis

- Perform system upgrades, patch management, capacity planning, backup/recovery procedures, and disaster recovery testing in coordination with infrastructure teams

- Establish and enforce governance policies for user access, project approval workflows, data retention, compliance auditing (eg HIPAA, 21 CFR Part 11, FISMA, GDPR), and institutional security requirements

- Provide advanced technical support for complex REDCap projects including custom data collection instruments, branching logic, calculated fields, survey distribution, data quality modules, and external system integrations

- Develop and maintain comprehensive documentation for system configurations, standard operating procedures, troubleshooting guides, and best practices

- Monitor system metrics including usage patterns, performance statistics, storage utilization, and user adoption trends; generate regular reports for stakeholders

- Coordinate with REDCap Consortium resources including Community forums, weekly webinars, and annual conferences to stay current with platform capabilities and emerging features

25

- Lead planning and implementation of highly complex technology projects that integrate Research IT systems with enterprise IT and departmental/project-specific research systems, potentially including electronic health records (EHR), clinical trial management systems (CTMS), biospecimen tracking, LIMS, and data warehouses. Projects may include building interconnections of existing systems to accommodate business use cases, as well as the creation or adoption of new systems to add new capabilities to Research IT overall.

- Architect automation frameworks using industry-standard tools including (but not limited to) Rundeck (runbook automation), ServiceNow (ITSM integration), and policy engines, and other devops tooling (Github, SonarQube, etc) to streamline operational workflows and reduce manual processes

- Develop technical roadmaps that align REDCap and other research tooling capabilities with institutional research priorities, emerging technologies, regulatory requirements, and long-term strategic goals

- Evaluate and prototype emerging technologies in research informatics, data capture methodologies, API integration patterns, containerization strategies, and cloud deployment models

- Establish architectural standards and technical patterns for research data systems including API design, authentication/authorization frameworks, data exchange protocols, and security architectures

- Collaborate with enterprise architects, security architects, and infrastructure teams to ensure REDCap and related systems align with campus-wide technical standards and compliance requirements

- Conduct feasibility analyses for proposed technical initiatives including cost-benefit assessments, risk evaluations, resource requirements, and implementation timelines

20

- Serve as technical lead for complex, cross-functional projects requiring deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and coordination across multiple teams and leadership

- Provide staff-level engineering leadership including technical direction setting, architectural decision-making, code/design reviews, and technical mentorship to project teams

- Act as the technical liaison between engineering teams and executive leadership, translating business requirements into technical specifications and communicating technical constraints to non-technical stakeholders

- Lead technical strategy discussions for projects involving data integration, system migrations, security enhancements, compliance initiatives, and infrastructure modernization

- Resolve technical disputes and architectural disagreements through expertise-driven consensus building, prototyping, proof-of-concept development, and objective evaluation

- Design and document technical solutions for high-impact initiatives including system architectures, data models, integration patterns, security controls, and operational procedures

- Coordinate with product managers, research operations teams, compliance officers, and clinical stakeholders to ensure technical solutions meet functional requirements and regulatory obligations

- Establish technical best practices, coding standards, documentation requirements, and quality assurance processes for research informatics projects

10

- Design and implement automation solutions using Rundeck for operational runbook automation including incident response procedures, change management workflows, provisioning tasks, and diagnostic automation

- Develop ServiceNow integrations enabling self-service capabilities, automated ticket workflows, change request automation, and bi-directional communication between ITSM and technical systems

- Implement policy-based automation using RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) and ABAC (Attribute-Based Access Control) engines to automate access provisioning, compliance checking, and security policy enforcement

- Create webhook-based automation triggers connecting ServiceNow incidents/changes to Rundeck job executions for automated remediation, diagnostic data collection, and system health checks

- Develop scripted automation for REDCap administrative tasks including user provisioning, project template deployment, audit report generation, and data quality monitoring

- Establish CI/CD pipelines for REDCap module deployments, configuration management, and infrastructure-as-code practices using tools such as GitHub Actions, Ansible, or similar platforms

- Build monitoring and alerting automation using tools like InfluxDB, Grafana, Prometheus, or similar platforms to proactively identify system issues and performance degradation

5

- Provide specialized consulting services to research teams, departments, or external collaborators requiring advanced REDCap expertise, custom development, or complex data architecture

- Support billable project engagements including study design consultation, custom instrument development, data migration services, and specialized training programs

- Develop project proposals, effort estimates, and technical specifications for consulting engagements requiring advanced technical capabilities

- Collaborate with research administrators and financial teams to track billable hours, deliverable completion, and project milestones for funded consulting work

- Maintain documentation and knowledge transfer materials for consulting engagements to support ongoing client relationships and institutional knowledge retention

0%

Academic Research Services (ARS) serves the needs of the UCSF research community by providing an integrated repository of HIPAA compliant clinical and life sciences data and a centralized, secure, professionally managed infrastructure for the storage and management of research data. ARS empowers medical scientific investigations by offering secure computing environments, data capture, management and analysis tools, and support services that meet researcher's needs.

This position is part of the ARS Research Tools group, which has a history of successfully deploying technology to enable cutting-edge work by researchers across many domains by providing quality solutions that leverage our affinity for our customers alongside first-in-class design patterns and modern tooling. Our team members have opportunities to provide direct impact for real-world efforts across the basic sciences, socio-behavioral studies, epidemiology, and public and global health initiatives.

Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Technical leadership

Lead planning and implementation of highly complex technology projects that integrate Research IT systems with enterprise IT and departmental/project-specific research systems, potentially including electronic health records (EHR), clinical trial management systems (CTMS), biospecimen tracking, LIMS, and data warehouses. Projects may include building interconnections of existing systems to accommodate business use cases, as well as the creation or adoption of new systems to add new capabilities to Research IT overall. Serve as technical lead for complex, cross-functional projects requiring deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and coordination across multiple teams and leadership

• Provide staff-level engineering leadership including technical direction setting, architectural decision-making, code/design reviews, and technical mentorship to project teams
• Architect automation frameworks using industry-standard tools including (but not limited to) Rundeck (runbook automation), ServiceNow (ITSM integration), and policy engines, and other devops tooling (Github, SonarQube, etc) to streamline operational workflows and reduce manual processes
• Develop technical roadmaps that align REDCap and other research tooling capabilities with institutional research priorities, emerging technologies, regulatory requirements, and long-term strategic goals
• Evaluate and prototype emerging technologies (including AI) in research informatics, data capture methodologies, API integration patterns, containerization strategies, and cloud deployment models

• Establish architectural standards and technical patterns for research data systems including API design, authentication/authorization frameworks, data exchange protocols, and security architectures

REDCap operations

Serve as lead and driver for platform availability, data integrity, security compliance, and optimal performance of the UCSF REDCap instances across 24/7 research operations.

• Design, implement, and maintain REDCap infrastructure including server architecture, database optimization, module management, API integrations, and additional module deployment and risk analysis
• Develop and maintain comprehensive documentation for system configurations, standard operating procedures, troubleshooting guides, and best practices
• Develop and maintain comprehensive documentation for system configurations, standard operating procedures, troubleshooting guides, and best practices

• Provide specialized consulting services to research teams, departments, or external collaborators requiring advanced REDCap expertise, custom development, or complex data architecture

Site reliability engineering

Design and implement automation solutions for operational runbook automation including incident response procedures, change management workflows, provisioning tasks, and diagnostic automation. For example:

• Establish CI/CD pipelines for REDCap module deployments, configuration management, and infrastructure-as-code practices using tools such as GitHub Actions, Ansible, or similar platforms
• Build monitoring and alerting automation using tools like InfluxDB, Grafana, Prometheus, or similar platforms to proactively identify system issues and performance degradation
• Use APM or other application monitoring tools to tune php-fpm, nginx, and other web server tools to support stability and observability of a pseudo-clustered, monolithic application.
  

Our team is distributed across the United States, and strives to protect a workplace with a strong focus on work/life balance. We work hard to appreciate the diverse backgrounds and life experiences of each of our team members. Our team culture includes an understanding that there can be many pathways for all of our journeys; in support of this we encourage applications from folks with a rich and varied background, including those re-entering the workforce.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES

Required

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, or a related/quantitative area, **OR** equivalent combination of experience / training.
• 4 or more years experience using modern devops tools for security scanning, CI/CD, and controlled code release practices
• 4 or more years experience managing code versioning and development workflows with a modern source control system