{"id":64245,"url":"https://alion.io/job/msd-lab-platform-technical-lead","title":"Lab Platform Technical Lead","company":{"id":3768,"name":"Merck & Co.","domain":"msd.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/msd","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":98,"open_postings":143,"ghost_share":0.035,"stale_share":0.119,"repost_share":0.154,"time_to_fill_p50_days":16,"computed_at":"2026-11-03T05:54:40Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","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":["Prague, Czech Republic"],"countries":["CZ"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":44000,"max_usd":130000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_cell_scaled_by_country","sample_n":2257},"experience_years_min":4,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agile","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"DNS","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"ITSM","optional":false},{"name":"Platform Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"21 CFR Part 11","optional":true},{"name":"Amazon CloudWatch","optional":true},{"name":"Benchling","optional":true},{"name":"C#","optional":true},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":true},{"name":"Datadog","optional":true},{"name":"Dynatrace","optional":true},{"name":"GitHub","optional":true},{"name":"GitHub Actions","optional":true},{"name":"Grafana","optional":true},{"name":"ITIL","optional":true},{"name":"LIMS","optional":true},{"name":"LLM","optional":true},{"name":"Pandas","optional":true},{"name":"PowerShell","optional":true},{"name":"Rest API","optional":true},{"name":"Scrum","optional":true},{"name":"Splunk","optional":true},{"name":"SQL","optional":true},{"name":"Streamlit","optional":true}],"status":"closed","first_seen_at":"2026-08-19T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-28","last_verified_at":"2026-11-03T00:55:12Z","board_verified":false,"closed_at":"2026-11-03T00:55:12Z","days_open":76,"trust":{"level":"not_scored","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":76},"description":"Job Description\nWe run the enterprise SaaS platforms, APIs, and data integrations that our research organisation depends on every day. You will be the technical owner of one of them: the Signals Research Suite - the electronic lab notebook platform used by scientists across several divisions worldwide.\nThis is a hands-on configuration, integration, and platform engineering role, not a ticket queue. You will own the technical roadmap, run the release pipeline, drive the vendor feature backlog, automate the manual work away, and decide where the platform goes next.\nOur platform happens to serve laboratory and experiment-management workflows, so you will learn that domain here - and you will learn Signals itself here. We do not expect you to arrive with either. What we do expect is that you have owned a production platform before and know how to make one better.\nReports to the Product Technical Lead.\nWhat You Will Do\nOwn the platform\nAct as technical owner for the Signals Research Suite and the integrations around it\n\nOwn the configuration, customisation, and development of the suite's modules to meet evolving research and business needs\n\nTranslate scientific workflow requirements into platform configuration (templates, experiments, workflows, ADTs) and into integrations with other systems\n\nOwn and prioritise the enhancement backlog, and contribute to the target-state architecture and technical roadmap for the platform\n\nRun releases and production\nManage the full SDLC: requirement gathering and analysis, solution design and configuration, development and scripting, collaboration with testing and UAT teams, deployment via the Configuration Transfer Tool or equivalent, production release, and hypercare\n\nLead investigation and resolution of production incidents across application, API, data, identity, and network layers\n\nDrive structured root-cause analysis and corrective actions to closure; improve monitoring, alerting, runbooks, and operational metrics so the next incident is shorter - or does not happen\n\nApply ITSM practices across Incident, Request, Problem, Change, Knowledge, and Release Management\n\nEngineer and integrate\nBuild and maintain integrations between Signals, internal enterprise services, SaaS and cloud applications, and legacy systems, using APIs and middleware\n\nDebug data-consistency and integration failures across APIs, event flows, and identity boundaries\n\nUse cloud services and enterprise networking knowledge to diagnose and harden platform reliability\n\nSupport deployments, go-live readiness, rollback planning, and post-deployment stabilisation\n\nAutomate and use AI well\nAutomate repetitive operational work - triage, configuration comparison, checks, reporting, provisioning - with scripting and approved tooling\n\nDrive AI initiatives that enhance scientific workflows for business users\n\nBuild internal AI-powered tools (e.g. a technical RAG chatbot) that accelerate team onboarding, troubleshooting, and self-service how-to guidance\n\nUse AI-assisted tooling for log analysis, incident triage, investigation, and knowledge capture - and validate its output against real platform evidence before acting on it\n\nSet technical direction\nServe as technical liaison with Revvity (the vendor) for escalations, defects, feature requests, enhancements, upgrades, and release coordination\n\nPrioritise technical work with the Product Owner, and communicate risk, impact, and options to technical and non-technical audiences alike\n\nCollaborate with cross-functional teams including Product Owner, Product Technical Lead, Quality Unit, infrastructure, and support\n\nMentor less experienced engineers and contribute to engineering standards and documentation\n\nWork in a global, distributed Agile team following product model practices\n\nWork in a regulated environment\nFollow established validation, change-control, and documentation practices - our platforms are audit-sensitive, and we will train you on what that means in practice\n\nDocument configurations, processes, and troubleshooting guides to support knowledge sharing and compliance requirements\n\nIdentify security, access, and data-protection risks early and bring in security and architecture partners\n\nWhat You Bring\n4+ years engineering, operating, configuring, or owning production software platforms, SaaS solutions, or enterprise systems\n\nReal production incident experience: you have been on the sharp end of an outage, led the investigation, and closed the loop afterwards\n\nStrong understanding of the complete SDLC, from requirements through production release and hypercare\n\nSolid debugging skills across the stack - application, API, data, identity, and network - with a structured approach to root-cause analysis\n\nWorking knowledge of a major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and of enterprise networking fundamentals (DNS, TLS, firewalls, proxies, connectivity patterns)\n\nScripting or development ability (Python or similar) for automation, and working knowledge of API and integration patterns, including RESTful services\n\nPractical use of AI-assisted tools in engineering or operations work, with sound judgement about their output\n\nSelf-driven and proactive: demonstrated ability to identify opportunities, propose solutions, and execute independently rather than waiting to be asked\n\nClear written and spoken English, and the ability to work with distributed teams across Europe, the US, and India\n\nBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a life sciences field (biology, chemistry, biotechnology, bioinformatics, biomedical engineering, or similar) - or equivalent practical experience. We welcome scientists who moved into engineering\n\nNice to Have (Not Required)\nWe will teach you the platform and the domain. Any of the following is a bonus, none is a filter:\nExperience with an ELN or LIMS platform, and in particular the Signals One Research Suite and its modules (Notebook, VitroVivo, Inventa, CD, Synergy) or the Signals Notebook REST API\n\nOther scientific informatics platforms - LIMS, ELN, sample management - or specific products such as Benchling or ZONTAL\n\nFamiliarity with scientific data standards (SDF, HELM, chemical structures) or with laboratory workflows such as stoichiometry, assay data, or sample management\n\nObservability tooling (Dynatrace, Grafana, Datadog, Splunk, CloudWatch or similar)\n\nInfrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines (GitHub, GitHub Actions), or containers\n\nAdditional languages and libraries: SQL, C#, PowerShell, Bash, Pandas, Streamlit\n\nExperience in a regulated, GxP, or otherwise audit-sensitive environment, including 21 CFR Part 11 / Annex 11\n\nExperience with AI/LLM technologies, RAG architectures, or building AI-powered internal tools\n\nExperience with Agile/Scrum delivery; ITIL v4 Foundation, Six Sigma Green Belt, or similar certification\n\nLife sciences, pharma, research, or manufacturing IT background\n\nAdvanced degree\n\nWhat Success Looks Like\nIn the first 6 months you will:\nCo-deliver 2 Signals software releases to production alongside the existing team\n\nMap current configuration, validation, and deployment processes end to end and identify improvement opportunities across them\n\nOwn and prioritise the Signals enhancement backlog, aligning vendor feature requests with business needs and release timelines\n\nEstablish yourself as the primary technical liaison with Revvity for feature coordination, escalations, and release planning\n\nIn the first 12 months you will:\nDeliver Signals software releases to production independently\n\nDrive 2-3 vendor feature enhancements from requirement through production release, coordinating across Revvity, QA, and business stakeholders\n\nImplement automated configuration promotion, reducing manual effort and deployment risk\n\nBuild and maintain a living enhancement roadmap that gives the Product Technical Lead and Product Owner clear visibility into pipeline status\n\nEstablish reusable automation (scripts, pipelines, dashboards) that reduces repetitive operational work across the team\n\nDeliver an AI-powered knowledge tool (e.g. a chatbot) that enables team self-service for technical how-to questions\n\nWhy This Role\nEnd-to-end ownership of a platform that directly enables drug discovery and development\n\nA technical practice you get to shape, not inherit fully formed\n\nGenuine mandate to automate and to apply AI tooling to platform and operations work\n\nPrague-based team working closely with US and India engineering\n\n What We Offer\nExciting work in a great team, global projects, international environment\n\nOpportunity to learn and grow professionally within the company globally\n\nPension and health (Canadian Medical) contributions\n\nInternal reward system plus referral program\n\n5 weeks annual leave, 5 sick days, 15 days of certified sick leave paid above statutory requirements annually, 40 paid hours annually for volunteering activities, 12 weeks of parental contribution\n\nCafeteria for tax free benefits according to your choice (meal vouchers, sport, culture, health, travel, etc.), Multisport card, Vodafone, Raiffeisen Bank and Foodora discount programs\n\nUp-to-date laptop and iPhone, parking in the garage, showers, refreshments\n\nCompetitive salary, incentive pay, and many more\n\nReady to take up the challenge? Apply now!\nKnow anybody who might be interested? Refer this job!\nThe date shown below is the earliest possible closing date for this posting. However, we sometimes extend the job posting period as needed, so please feel free to apply anytime you see the \"Apply \" button available. You may also reach out to the recruiter directly via https://www.linkedin.com/in/badumtss/\nRequired Skills:\nArtificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing, IT Networking, Production Troubleshooting, RESTful APIs, Scripting, Software as a Service (SaaS), Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Technical LeadershipPreferred Skills:\nCI/CD, Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN), GxPs, Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), Pharmaceutical Industry, Scrum (Agile)Current Employees apply HERE\nCurrent Contingent Workers apply HERE\nSearch Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully\nMerck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.\nEmployee Status:\nRegularRelocation:\nNo relocationVISA Sponsorship:\nYesTravel Requirements:\n10%Flexible Work Arrangements:\nHybridShift:\nNot IndicatedValid Driving License:\nNoHazardous Material(s):\nN/AJob Posting End Date:\n09/1/2026*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. 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