Platform Engineering Lead – London

An AI-first organisation is applying frontier machine learning to help unlock deeper scientific insights, accelerate breakthroughs, and bring life-changing medicines to patients faster. Their mission is ambitious: to transform drug discovery and, ultimately, solve all disease.

This is a rare opportunity to join an interdisciplinary team at the cutting edge of AI and biology, driving groundbreaking innovation in digital drug discovery.

The Role

As Platform Engineering Lead, you will play a pivotal role in shaping and delivering the engineering foundations of the company’s drug design platform. This platform is designed to take in a disease and output candidate molecules or biologics – reducing costs, improving efficiency, and accelerating the path to new medicines.

You’ll lead hands-on technical development, cross-team initiatives, and the creation of frameworks and engineering components, while ensuring quality, scalability, and reliability at every stage.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the development and implementation of frameworks and core engineering components for the platform
• Drive cross-team initiatives, coordinating resources and setting the technical roadmap
• Take ownership of platform quality and address current gaps, ensuring continuous improvement
• Execute directly on the most complex technical challenges in platform development
• Collaborate with other engineering leads and the Head of Engineering to set long-term technical strategy
• Mentor team members and foster engineering best practices

What We’re Looking For

Essential:

• Proven track record building complex, ML-focused platforms
• Strong proficiency in Python
• Experience leading cross-team engineering efforts or overseeing multiple teams
• Ability to manage ambiguity and drive clarity across projects
• Comfortable integrating open-source and third-party software
• Experience working closely with machine learning teams

Nice to Have:

• Background in biotech, pharma, or AI-driven drug discovery
• Experience in both large organisations (with structured processes and metrics) and smaller/startup environments (delivering with limited resources)
• Knowledge of observability and reliability practices for product platforms
• Security or compliance experience

Why Join?

• Be part of a world-class AI-first research environment shaping the future of drug discovery
• Work on high-visibility projects with real-world patient impact
• Competitive compensation including salary + equity
• Collaborative, mission-driven culture built on curiosity, bravery, and determination
• Hybrid model (3 days per week in the London office) with flexibility for the right candidate