Engineering Director Jobs at AbbVie with Visa Sponsorship
Engineering Director jobs at AbbVie lead complex, cross-functional teams across drug development, manufacturing, and technology infrastructure. The company has an established track record of sponsoring work visas for senior engineering talent, making it a realistic target for international candidates pursuing long-term careers in the pharmaceutical and biotech space.
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Allergan Aesthetics
At Allergan Aesthetics, an AbbVie company, we develop, manufacture, and market a portfolio of leading aesthetics brands and products. Our aesthetics portfolio includes facial injectables, body contouring, plastics, skin care, and more. Our goal is to consistently provide our customers with innovation, education, exceptional service, and a commitment to excellence, all with a personal touch.
Job Description
The Manager, Cloud Engineering, will continuously collaborate with key stakeholders across the business to solve critical technical problems for Allergan Aesthetics. You will be a hands-on leader of the foundational engineering team driving our system/service reliability, scale, and developer productivity. In this dual-focus leadership role, you will bridge the gap between keeping our production environment highly resilient and ensuring our internal software developers have friction-free, high-speed tools and pipelines. You will lead a talented team of engineers who build scalable infrastructure, standardize developer tooling, reduce toil, and foster a culture of operational excellence across the entire engineering organization.
People & Team Leadership:
- Manage, lead, hire, develop and mentor a team of Platform Engineers to deliver high-quality infrastructure and developer solutions that are secure, resilient, and scalable.
- Foster a collaborative and inclusive team culture, encouraging knowledge sharing and continuous learning.
- Create and recommend professional learning paths for direct reports.
- Conceptualize and execute technical approaches for emerging systems and architecture.
- Implement, through the team, the high bar of quality and standards for production reliability and the developer experience.
- Act as the key point of contact between your team and other stakeholders and partner teams.
Site Reliability & Platform Engineering:
- Lead the adoption and maturation of SRE practices across the organization, partnering with service owners to improve production reliability.
- Define and champion SLO/SLI frameworks and error budget-based decision making to drive prioritization between reliability and feature work.
- Lead the strategy for internal developer platform capabilities — influence self-service infrastructure, developer tooling, and deployment patterns that improve velocity and reduce toil for product teams.
- Responsible for team capacity planning and staffing allocation activities to ensure sufficient staffing for current and future needs.
Incident Management & Response:
- Plan, staff and support on-call rotation.
- Manage robust incident response and resolution, capture corrective and preventative actions and continuous improvements.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
- Experience (1-3 years) in a leadership role managing cloud/platform engineering teams with 6+ years of hands-on experience in SRE, DevOps, Infrastructure, and Platform Engineering.
- Experience building and operating internal developer platforms that improve engineering productivity, standardize delivery patterns, and reduce operational toil.
- Deep background in modern cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure), container orchestration (Kubernetes), Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi), and CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, GitLab CI).
- System Design: Proven track record in designing, scaling, and maintaining distributed systems with high availability requirements.
- Observability: Experience implementing comprehensive monitoring, logging, tracing, and alerting frameworks (Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry).
- Experience surveying developer teams to identify friction points, prioritize platform improvements, and translate feedback into self-service capabilities that improve developer productivity.
- Deep experience with platform engineering and SRE practices and frameworks.
- Programming proficiency of various languages (e.g., Java, C#, Python, Go, Rust).
- Knowledge of secure SDLC practices and methodologies.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders.
- Relevant cloud certifications (e.g. AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) are a plus.
Preferred Experience
- Demonstrated ability to lead cloud modernization, migration, or platform transformation initiatives in a regulated or enterprise environment.
- Hands-on experience with Kubernetes platform operations, GitOps workflows, service mesh, secrets management, and policy-as-code practices.
- Experience applying FinOps principles to optimize cloud consumption, cost visibility, capacity planning, and resource governance.
- Ability to influence architecture and technical strategy across cross-functional teams while balancing reliability, security, scalability, and business delivery needs.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to think strategically and provide innovative solutions to complex security challenges.
Additional Information
AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives and serving our community. Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled.
US & Puerto Rico only - to learn more, visit
US & Puerto Rico applicants seeking a reasonable accommodation, click here to learn more:
Company Description
Allergan Aesthetics
At Allergan Aesthetics, an AbbVie company, we develop, manufacture, and market a portfolio of leading aesthetics brands and products. Our aesthetics portfolio includes facial injectables, body contouring, plastics, skin care, and more. Our goal is to consistently provide our customers with innovation, education, exceptional service, and a commitment to excellence, all with a personal touch.
Job Description
The Manager, Cloud Engineering, will continuously collaborate with key stakeholders across the business to solve critical technical problems for Allergan Aesthetics. You will be a hands-on leader of the foundational engineering team driving our system/service reliability, scale, and developer productivity. In this dual-focus leadership role, you will bridge the gap between keeping our production environment highly resilient and ensuring our internal software developers have friction-free, high-speed tools and pipelines. You will lead a talented team of engineers who build scalable infrastructure, standardize developer tooling, reduce toil, and foster a culture of operational excellence across the entire engineering organization.
People & Team Leadership:
- Manage, lead, hire, develop and mentor a team of Platform Engineers to deliver high-quality infrastructure and developer solutions that are secure, resilient, and scalable.
- Foster a collaborative and inclusive team culture, encouraging knowledge sharing and continuous learning.
- Create and recommend professional learning paths for direct reports.
- Conceptualize and execute technical approaches for emerging systems and architecture.
- Implement, through the team, the high bar of quality and standards for production reliability and the developer experience.
- Act as the key point of contact between your team and other stakeholders and partner teams.
Site Reliability & Platform Engineering:
- Lead the adoption and maturation of SRE practices across the organization, partnering with service owners to improve production reliability.
- Define and champion SLO/SLI frameworks and error budget-based decision making to drive prioritization between reliability and feature work.
- Lead the strategy for internal developer platform capabilities — influence self-service infrastructure, developer tooling, and deployment patterns that improve velocity and reduce toil for product teams.
- Responsible for team capacity planning and staffing allocation activities to ensure sufficient staffing for current and future needs.
Incident Management & Response:
- Plan, staff and support on-call rotation.
- Manage robust incident response and resolution, capture corrective and preventative actions and continuous improvements.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
- Experience (1-3 years) in a leadership role managing cloud/platform engineering teams with 6+ years of hands-on experience in SRE, DevOps, Infrastructure, and Platform Engineering.
- Experience building and operating internal developer platforms that improve engineering productivity, standardize delivery patterns, and reduce operational toil.
- Deep background in modern cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure), container orchestration (Kubernetes), Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi), and CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, GitLab CI).
- System Design: Proven track record in designing, scaling, and maintaining distributed systems with high availability requirements.
- Observability: Experience implementing comprehensive monitoring, logging, tracing, and alerting frameworks (Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry).
- Experience surveying developer teams to identify friction points, prioritize platform improvements, and translate feedback into self-service capabilities that improve developer productivity.
- Deep experience with platform engineering and SRE practices and frameworks.
- Programming proficiency of various languages (e.g., Java, C#, Python, Go, Rust).
- Knowledge of secure SDLC practices and methodologies.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders.
- Relevant cloud certifications (e.g. AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) are a plus.
Preferred Experience
- Demonstrated ability to lead cloud modernization, migration, or platform transformation initiatives in a regulated or enterprise environment.
- Hands-on experience with Kubernetes platform operations, GitOps workflows, service mesh, secrets management, and policy-as-code practices.
- Experience applying FinOps principles to optimize cloud consumption, cost visibility, capacity planning, and resource governance.
- Ability to influence architecture and technical strategy across cross-functional teams while balancing reliability, security, scalability, and business delivery needs.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to think strategically and provide innovative solutions to complex security challenges.
Additional Information
AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives and serving our community. Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled.
US & Puerto Rico only - to learn more, visit
US & Puerto Rico applicants seeking a reasonable accommodation, click here to learn more:
See all Engineering Director Jobs at AbbVie
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new Engineering Director Jobs at AbbVie.
Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding Engineering Director Jobs at AbbVie
Frame your credentials around regulated engineering environments
AbbVie operates under FDA manufacturing standards and GxP compliance requirements. Before applying, make sure your resume explicitly reflects experience in validated systems, regulated production environments, or pharmaceutical-adjacent engineering so your background maps directly to their technical leadership needs.
Target roles aligned with AbbVie's therapeutic pipeline priorities
AbbVie's Engineering Director openings cluster around immunology, oncology, and neuroscience manufacturing platforms. Search for roles tied to these therapeutic areas or their biologics facilities, where engineering leadership demand tends to be most active and sponsorship for senior hires is well established.
Clarify E-3 eligibility before your final interview round
If you're an Australian citizen, the E-3 visa is significantly faster to process than the H-1B and has no lottery. Raise your eligibility early with the recruiting team so AbbVie's immigration counsel can prepare the Labor Condition Application with DOL before an offer is extended.
Understand how PERM affects senior engineering timelines
For EB-2 or EB-3 Green Card pathways, AbbVie must run a PERM labor market test through DOL before filing your immigrant petition. At the Engineering Director level, this process typically takes six to twelve months before USCIS even receives your I-140, so factor that into your long-term planning.
Use Migrate Mate to identify active Engineering Director openings at AbbVie
Filter by role title and visa type on Migrate Mate to surface current Engineering Director positions at AbbVie that explicitly support sponsorship. Applying to verified roles saves time and gives you a clearer picture of which business units are actively hiring sponsored candidates.
Confirm cap-exempt status does not apply to your situation
AbbVie is a for-profit employer, so H-1B filings go through the annual lottery unless you're transferring from a cap-exempt institution. If you're currently on OPT or between roles, confirm your timeline with USCIS processing windows so your work authorization stays continuous through any transition.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does AbbVie sponsor H-1B visas for Engineering Directors?
Yes, AbbVie sponsors H-1B visas for Engineering Directors. As a large pharmaceutical employer, AbbVie has a well-established immigration program that handles H-1B petitions through USCIS, including premium processing when timelines require it. Senior engineering roles typically involve complex sponsorship coordination, so their in-house legal team or outside counsel manages the process from Labor Condition Application filing through petition approval.
Which visa types does AbbVie commonly use for Engineering Director roles?
AbbVie sponsors several visa categories for senior engineering talent, including H-1B, E-3 visa for Australian citizens, TN visa for Canadian and Mexican nationals, and H-1B1 visa for Chilean and Singaporean citizens. For candidates seeking permanent residence, AbbVie supports EB-2 and EB-3 Green Card pathways through the PERM labor certification process with DOL, followed by an I-140 immigrant petition filed with USCIS.
What qualifications does AbbVie expect for a sponsored Engineering Director role?
AbbVie typically requires a bachelor's degree or higher in engineering, chemical engineering, or a closely related field, combined with substantial leadership experience in a regulated manufacturing or pharmaceutical environment. Engineering Directors are expected to manage cross-functional teams, oversee capital projects, and maintain compliance with GxP or FDA standards. Advanced degrees and experience with biologics or sterile manufacturing processes strengthen your candidacy significantly.
How do I apply for Engineering Director jobs at AbbVie?
You can search and apply for Engineering Director positions directly through AbbVie's careers portal, or use Migrate Mate to filter specifically for AbbVie roles that offer visa sponsorship. Applying through a platform that surfaces sponsorship-verified roles saves time, especially if you're targeting roles that match your specific visa type. Tailor your application to highlight regulated engineering leadership and any pharmaceutical or biotech-specific experience.
How do I plan my timeline if I need visa sponsorship for an AbbVie Engineering Director role?
If you're targeting an H-1B, the annual lottery cap-subject registration window opens in March, with employment typically starting October 1. If you're on F-1 OPT, confirm your remaining authorization period allows enough runway for the petition cycle. E-3 and TN visas move faster since they bypass the lottery entirely. For Green Card sponsorship, PERM labor certification and subsequent USCIS filings can extend the overall timeline to two years or more depending on your priority date.