Head of Technology, Digital Health Services (Topeka)

Job Description

Bausch + Lomb ( NYSE / TSX : BLCO ) is a leading global eye health company dedicated to protecting and enhancing the gift of sight for millions of people around the world from the moment of birth through every phase of life. Our mission is simple, yet powerful: helping you see better, to live better.

Our comprehensive portfolio of over 400 products is fully integrated and built to serve our customers across the full spectrum of their eye health needs throughout their lives. Our iconic brand is built on the deep trust and loyalty of our customers established over our 170-year history. We have a significant global research, development, manufacturing and commercial footprint of approximately 13,000 employees and a presence in approximately 100 countries, extending our reach to billions of potential customers across the globe. We have long been associated with many of the most significant advances in eye health, and we believe we are well positioned to continue leading the advancement of eye health in the future.

Position Overview

Digital Health Services is a newly formed business unit with a mandate to build a layer of AI-driven tools that improve how patients navigate their care journey, from first diagnosis through treatment and beyond. We are starting with a focused, high-value problem in pre-operative patient education and building from there; our goal is to serve patients and physicians across the full eye care continuum.

Head of Technology, Digital Health Services

The Head of Technology, Digital Health Services is a founding role, reporting to the President, Digital Health Services. You will be the first technical hire, and work alongside the Head of Product who is being recruited in parallel. You will set the architecture, help select the technology partners, and build the engineering culture from day one. You will also be expected to get your hands dirty; this is not a role for someone who wants to come in a manage a team on day one; that will come later. Right now, our job is to build.

The commercial backing of B+L its distribution, its clinical relationships, its reach across the eye care ecosystem gives this product a head start that a standalone startup cannot replicate. The charter of the BU gives it the speed and decision‑making autonomy to operate like one.

What You Will Do

Architecture and Technical Leadership

• Own the end-to-end technical architecture cloud infrastructure, AI/ML systems, data platform, security, and scalability and make decisions that balance speed to ship with long-term defensibility
• Lead build vs. buy vs. partner evaluations for every core technology component, making clear-eyed decisions about where to invest engineering effort and where to leverage existing solutions
• Select and manage the initial development partner you will play a central role in evaluating, choosing, and structuring the relationship with the firm that executes the first build while the internal team grows; this is a thought‑partnership decision, not a solo call
• Architect for EHR interoperability and HL7 FHIR compliance from day one, even where active integration is not in the initial scope the data model and API design must not create future blockers
• Design the patient-facing architecture with scalability across the eye care continuum in mind the initial product is pre-operative, but the platform will expand and the foundations should support it

Compliance and Regulatory Readiness

• Own data governance and HIPAA compliance infrastructure from the start, including BAA frameworks, audit logging, and access controls
• Build the compliance architecture with regulated software pathways in mind the right data capture, audit trails, and quality infrastructure from day one, even ahead of formal regulatory requirements
• Ensure the platform is instrumented to generate the real‑world evidence and performance data that will matter as the product evolves
• Partner with B+Ls regulatory and legal resources to stay ahead of the compliance requirements that come with operating in a clinical environment
• Own the post‑market surveillance architecture define the technical systems and processes for ongoing safety monitoring, adverse event capture, and real‑world performance tracking that a cleared SaMD will require

Product and Clinical

• Partner with the Head of Product on roadmap prioritization, ensuring every technical trade‑off is grounded in clinical realities and commercial outcomes
• Ensure the product ships reliably and performs in real clinical environments from day one uptime, latency, and incident response all sit with you
• Instrument the platform with the right telemetry and data capture to support continuous improvement and future product decisions
• Represent technical credibility externally with pilot clinicians, with B+L leadership, and with prospective technology and data partners

AI and Data

• Lead AI model selection, evaluation, fine‑tuning, and deployment with a clear‑eyed view of where foundation models serve the use case and where custom development is required
• Build AI governance infrastructure from the start model explainability, bias evaluation, and audit trails for AI‑assisted clinical interactions
• Own the data platform strategy, ensuring patient data is handled with the rigor that a clinical environment demands and the architecture supports future analytics and evidence generation

Team and Culture

• Set the engineering culture from day one hiring practices, technical standards, and ways of working that will define the team as it scales
• Build the engineering team over time as the organization grows you are the first technical hire, not the last; the team grows around you and your standards

What We Are Looking For

Required

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with meaningful time in a senior technical leadership role CTO , VP Engineering, or Staff/Principal Engineer who has owned architecture end-to-end; first‑time CTOs with the right foundation are strongly encouraged to apply
• Proven track record of taking a product from early‑stage architecture to live, scaling production you have done this before, not just planned it
• Genuine builder mentality you are comfortable being the only engineer in the room for a period, writing code and making architecture decisions hands‑on before the team exists beneath you
• Deep experience with AI/ML systems in production model selection, fine‑tuning, evaluation, deployment, and governance
• Strong command of modern cloud architecture ( AWS , GCP , or Azure), data infrastructure, and API design at scale
• Experience building in regulated or compliance‑adjacent environments you understand what it means to ship software that has to be right, and you build accordingly
• Comfortable with ambiguity and concentrated technical risk you make confident architectural decisions before all the information is in, and you own the outcome
• Strong communicator and genuine thought partner able to operate credibly with a GM, a development partner, and clinical stakeholders who are not engineers

Strongly Preferred

• Background in healthcare technology digital health, medtech, EHR / HIS , or clinical decision support
• Familiarity with HIPAA compliance, BAA frameworks, and healthcare data governance in practice, not just in theory
• Hands‑on experience with EHR interoperability and HL7 FHIR standards you have built against or alongside real EHR systems and understand the practical complexity, not just the specification
• Understanding of regulated software pathways and what it takes to build toward them, including quality management systems and software lifecycle standards
• Experience with patient‑facing digital health products consumer‑grade UX expectations in a clinical context
• Experience selecting, structuring, and managing external develo