What is a Data Engineer at Amgen?

At Amgen, our shared mission is simple but profound: to serve patients living with serious illnesses. As a Data Engineer specializing in IS Data Center Operations, you are the critical link that ensures the technological heartbeat of our biotech innovations remains strong, resilient, and uninterrupted. You will bridge the gap between Information Technology (IT) and the Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing (MEP) systems that power and cool our enterprise data centers.

Your work directly impacts Amgen’s ability to research, manufacture, and deliver life-saving medicines. By maintaining operational continuity, optimizing infrastructure, and proactively mitigating risks, you ensure that our scientists, engineers, and business leaders have the reliable computational power and data storage they need. This role is not a traditional software engineering position; it is a highly specialized infrastructure and operations role that demands a unique blend of IT hardware expertise and facility systems awareness.

You will be stationed at our New Albany, OH facility, working hands-on with enterprise infrastructure like Dell PowerEdge, Nutanix, NetApp, and Cisco platforms. Whether you are tracing fiber optic cables, interpreting electrical one-line diagrams, or leveraging AI-enabled monitoring tools to predict outages, your expertise will safeguard the data that ultimately transforms patients' lives. Expect a dynamic, hands-on environment where your analytical skills and customer service orientation will be tested daily.

Common Interview Questions

Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Preparation is the key to demonstrating that you can handle the high-stakes environment of a mission-critical data center. Your interviewers will look for a blend of technical capability, cross-functional communication, and a proactive mindset.

Focus your preparation on these key evaluation criteria:

• Infrastructure & Hardware Expertise – Your hands-on ability to install, rack, cable, and support enterprise IT systems. Interviewers will assess your familiarity with structured cabling standards and hardware lifecycle management.
• MEP Systems Literacy – Your ability to read, interpret, and act upon electrical one-line diagrams, distribution drawings, and cooling schematics. You must demonstrate that you can "speak the language" of facilities teams without necessarily being a licensed tradesperson.
• Troubleshooting & Problem-Solving – How you approach connectivity issues, trace cabling faults, and respond to monitoring alerts. We evaluate your logical progression from symptom to root cause.
• Collaboration & Culture Fit – Your capacity to serve as a liaison between IT teams, facilities staff, and vendor partners. We look for clear communication, a safety-first mindset, and an alignment with Amgen’s science-based, collaborative culture.

Interview Process Overview

The interview process for the IS Data Center Operations Engineer role is designed to assess both your hands-on technical knowledge and your ability to navigate complex, cross-functional environments. You will typically begin with a recruiter phone screen to verify your core qualifications, experience level, and alignment with the onsite requirements in New Albany.

Following the initial screen, expect a technical deep-dive with the hiring manager. This conversation will focus heavily on your past experience with data center environments, your familiarity with specific hardware platforms, and your ability to read facility diagrams. The process usually culminates in a panel interview featuring stakeholders from both IT and Facilities teams. Because this role requires you to bridge these two worlds, the panel will test your communication skills, your troubleshooting methodology, and your understanding of disaster recovery and capacity planning.

Expect a rigorous but conversational process. Amgen values data-driven decision-making and collaborative problem-solving, so be prepared to walk interviewers through specific past incidents where your intervention prevented downtime or optimized operations.

The timeline above outlines the typical progression from initial screening to the final panel and offer stage. Use this visual to pace your preparation, ensuring you review core IT concepts early on and reserve time later to practice articulating your troubleshooting methodologies for the cross-functional panel. Note that because this is a hands-on role, final rounds may include scenario-based questions simulating real-world data center outages.

Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

To succeed in your interviews, you must demonstrate deep competence across several distinct technical and operational domains.

Enterprise IT Infrastructure & Cabling

This area evaluates your hands-on experience with the physical layer of enterprise IT. You must prove your competence in installing and maintaining the hardware that runs our applications. Strong performance means you can discuss the nuances of different cabling standards and hardware platforms with confidence.

Be ready to go over:

• Structured Cabling – Deep knowledge of Outside Plant (OSP) fiber, CAT6A standards, and campus patching standards.
• Hardware Platforms – Familiarity with racking, stacking, and configuring Dell PowerEdge, Nutanix, NetApp, and Cisco equipment.
• Moves, Adds, and Changes (MACs) – Standard procedures for executing day-to-day operations in building IDFs and VDER environments safely and efficiently.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Cable management capacity planning, DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management) platform integration, and hardware lifecycle automation.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk me through your process for tracing and troubleshooting a suddenly degraded fiber connection between two IDF closets."
• "How do you ensure proper cable management and documentation when performing a large-scale hardware deployment?"
• "Describe a time you had to rack and stack a high-density storage solution like NetApp. What physical and thermal considerations did you account for?"

MEP Systems & Facility Alignment

While you will not perform electrical or mechanical trade work, you must understand these systems well enough to collaborate with the teams that do. This is a critical differentiator for this role at Amgen.

Be ready to go over:

• Diagram Literacy – Interpreting electrical one-line diagrams and distribution drawings to understand power flow and redundancy.
• Cooling Operations – Awareness of CRAC/CRAH units, hot/cold aisle containment, and chilled water systems.
• Incident Response – Coordinating with facilities teams during power anomalies or cooling failures to protect IT assets.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – UPS and generator failover sequences, calculating thermal loads for new rack deployments.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Here is a sample electrical one-line diagram. Can you identify the redundant power paths to this specific server rack?"
• "If you receive an alert that ambient temperatures in a specific data center zone are rising rapidly, what are your immediate next steps?"
• "How do you communicate a critical IT maintenance window to a facilities team that needs to perform mechanical work in the same area?"

Monitoring, Automation, and Disaster Recovery

Amgen relies on predictive analytics and automation to maintain uptime. You will be evaluated on your ability to move beyond reactive troubleshooting into proactive infrastructure management.

Be ready to go over:

• AI-Enabled Monitoring – Using modern alerting and monitoring platforms to detect anomalies before they cause outages.
• Disaster Recovery – Participating in DR drills and understanding the ITIL practices that govern enterprise incident management.
• Scripting & Automation – Utilizing tools like Python or Ansible to automate repetitive operational tasks.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Integrating AI predictive analytics into standard capacity planning workflows.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Describe your experience using monitoring platforms to proactively identify a failing hardware component."
• "How would you use a scripting language like Python or Ansible to streamline a repetitive data center operations task?"
• "Walk me through your role in a recent disaster recovery drill. What went well, and what needed improvement?"