{"id":2833731,"url":"https://alion.io/job/lhasa-limited-lead-platform-engineer","title":"Lead Platform Engineer","company":{"id":2398211,"name":"Lhasa Limited","domain":"lhasalimited.org","url":"https://alion.io/company/lhasalimited","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Schema","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":3,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-22T06:10:10Z"}},"role":"DevOps","role_family":"DevOps","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Leeds, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":70000,"max":null,"currency":"GBP","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":93306},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Ansible","optional":false},{"name":"ArgoCD","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Backstage","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Docker","optional":false},{"name":"GitOps","optional":false},{"name":"Grafana","optional":false},{"name":"Helm","optional":false},{"name":"Jenkins","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Loki","optional":false},{"name":"Platform Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Prometheus","optional":false},{"name":"Terraform","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-01-23T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-01","last_verified_at":"2026-10-21T16:08:10Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":272,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":272},"description":"Lead Platform Engineer\nFrom £70,000 \n\nPermanent\n\nLeeds (hybrid)\n\nClosing date: 25 October 2026\nSalary & Benefits\nFrom £70,000 per annum depending on experience, plus generous benefits package, including:\n34 days holiday per year (plus bank holidays)\nHealth care cash back\nPrivate medical insurance\nDiscounted gym and retail benefits\n3 x life insurance\nannual bonuses\nfree onsite car parking\nEmployee advice line\nGenerous pension plan\nLocation\nLhasa Limited, Granary Wharf House, 2 Canal Wharf, Leeds LS11 5PS. We support hybrid working with a typical week involving 2 days working from the office.\nJoin our team and contribute to cutting-edge research in a collaborative and innovative environment.\nSummary of the Role\nThe Lead Platform Engineer provides strategic technical leadership for Lhasa’s cloud-native platform engineering initiatives, establishing architectural standards and operational practices that enable scalable SaaS product delivery. They drive the evolution of developer experience through self-service platforms, GitOps workflows, and comprehensive observability solutions.\nLeading a team of platform engineers, they mentor technical talent whilst collaborating with stakeholders across the organisation to align platform capabilities with business objectives. The Lead Platform Engineer owns service production reliability, implements DORA and Core 4 metrics for continuous improvement, and ensures compliance with security standards in high-value data environments. They balance strategic cloud platform planning with hands-on technical execution to deliver world-class engineering platforms.\nWhy Lhasa Limited?\nWe are a successful not-for-profit company and educational charity, with a great reputation for collaborative scientific development.\nWe develop meaningful science and software that supports the delivery of life-enhancing solutions including the development of safe chemicals to market including drugs and cosmetics as well as making a positive contribution to reducing animal testing.\nOur charitable status enables us to make altruistic decisions for the public benefit and to work with some of the leading organisations in the world to really make a difference.\nOur salaries are competitive dependent upon skills and experience. We also offer fantastic personal benefits including (but not limited to); 34 days holiday plus bank holidays, a generous pension scheme, healthcare cashback, PMI, free car parking at our office in Leeds City Centre and much more!\nMain Responsibilities\nLeadership\nStrategic leadership of the platform engineering team, developing talent at all levels.\nLead the team’s vision, strategy and roadmap for platform engineering initiatives, ensuring they are aligned with broader organisational goals.\nFoster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement within the platform engineering team and across tech teams\nManage team capacity planning and resource allocation, balancing feature delivery with operational excellence and technical debt reduction\nCollaborate with stakeholders to drive organisational change management for platform adoption.\nTechnical Leadership & Cloud Platform Strategy\nLead implementation of DORA and Core 4 metrics whilst establishing operating models for SaaS product delivery\nCoach and mentor engineers on Kubernetes, Docker, Helm, and GitOps good practices whilst reviewing infrastructure changes\nDesign GitOps workflows using ArgoCD and architect self-service capabilities through Backstage portal\nPlan cloud platform (internally and AWS), managing cost optimisation and infrastructure budgets\nEstablish platform standards for cloud, containerisation, orchestration, observability, security, and CI/CD practices\nDeveloper Experience & Service Management\nEnhance Backstage portal with personalised dashboards and Software Templates for common patterns\nOwn production SaaS infrastructure reliability, providing third-line support for escalations\nDesign robust CI/CD pipelines in Jenkins whilst managing multi-cluster Kubernetes environments\nImplement security good practices (RBAC, network policies) and disaster recovery strategies\nPartner with Product Teams and Member Services to understand customer requirements and address platform needs\nObservability & Continuous Improvement\nMaintain observability stack (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki) with comprehensive SLIs/SLOs and alerting\nCreate runbooks and incident response procedures\nDrive cost optimisation strategies for internal cloud and AWS infrastructure\nEliminate toil through automation and optimise deployment pipelines for reliability improvements\nResearch new technologies and evolve platform based on industry good practices\nCollaboration & Standards\nPartner with security teams on compliance in high-value data environments\nFacilitate platform engineering community of practice and coordinate with product teams on planning\nDocument architectural decisions and ensure consistent tool adoption across teams\nMentor and coach engineers on platform technologies and best practices\nReview code and infrastructure changes from team members\nSkills and Knowledge\nEssential\n5+ years designing cloud infrastructure with proven track record of owning production SaaS platforms\nExpert Kubernetes orchestration including multi-cluster management and resource optimisation\nExperience architecting cloud infrastructure across multiple providers with cost management ownership\nHands-on GitOps experience with ArgoCD and Helm for continuous deployment\nProficiency in IaC tools (CDK, Terraform, Ansible) and observability platforms\nKnowledge of security standards and compliance in high-value data environments\nStrong stakeholder management with ability to influence across organisational boundaries\nExperience with developer portal platforms for self-service capabilities\nDesired\nAWS or Kubernetes certifications (CKA, CKAD)\nDORA/Core 4 metrics implementation\nExperience evolving platforms based on industry good practices\nTypeScript/React for portal customisation\nInterested? Apply now\n\"*\" indicates required fields\nEqual opportunities statement\nLhasa Limited aims to ensure that no job applicant, colleague, or worker receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of race, colour, caste, national or ethnic origins, sex, pregnancy or pregnancy related reasons, marital or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, disability, membership or non-membership of trade union, “spent convictions” of ex-offenders, class, age, political or religious belief.\nLhasa will make reasonable adjustments for all candidates who have declared that they have a disability at all stages in the recruitment process. Lhasa will also make reasonable adjustments, where practicable, to the workplace and methods of working to accommodate disabled applicants who require such adjustments to be made to their roles.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6851,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Annual bonuses","Health insurance","Hybrid work","Life insurance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Research Institutes","Scientific & Lab Software"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-19T04:20:24Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"GB","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"Licensed UK visa sponsor (Skilled Worker)","filings_12m":null,"filings_prev_12m":null,"green_card_filings_12m":null,"median_offered_wage_usd":null,"route":"Skilled Worker","cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-22T06:27:10+00:00","sources":["UK Home Office: register of licensed sponsors (workers)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":6,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.228,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":272,"expected_fill_days":30,"reasons":["conf:14","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-22T06:10:10Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":93306,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/lhasa-limited-lead-platform-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/lhasa-limited-lead-platform-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-22T07:43:13Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":3459,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-23T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":2398211},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=2398211"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Flhasa-limited-lead-platform-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Flhasa-limited-lead-platform-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Flhasa-limited-lead-platform-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/lhasa-limited-lead-platform-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Flhasa-limited-lead-platform-engineer"}]}