Lead Platform Engineer

# Lead Platform Engineer
* From £70,000
* Permanent* Leeds (hybrid)
Closing date: 25 October 2026###
** Salary & Benefits
** From £70,000 per annum depending on experience, plus generous benefits package, including:  34 days holiday per year (plus bank holidays)
• Health care cash back
• Private medical insurance
• Discounted gym and retail benefits
• 3 x life insurance
• annual bonuses
• free onsite car parking
• Employee advice line
• Generous pension plan###
** Location
* * Lhasa 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.
* Join our team and contribute to cutting-edge research in a collaborative and innovative environment.*###
** Summary of the Role
** The 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, Git Ops workflows, and comprehensive observability solutions.

Leading 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.###

** Why Lhasa Limited?
** We are a successful not-for-profit company and educational charity, with a great reputation for collaborative scientific development.

We 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.

Our 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.

Our 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!###
** Main Responsibilities**###### Leadership
* Strategic leadership of the platform engineering team, developing talent at all levels.
* Lead the team’s vision, strategy and roadmap for platform engineering initiatives, ensuring they are aligned with broader organisational goals.
* Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement within the platform engineering team and across tech teams
* Manage team capacity planning and resource allocation, balancing feature delivery with operational excellence and technical debt reduction
* Collaborate with stakeholders to drive organisational change management for platform adoption.###### Technical Leadership & Cloud Platform Strategy
* Lead implementation of DORA and Core 4 metrics whilst establishing operating models for SaaS product delivery
* Coach and mentor engineers on Kubernetes, Docker, Helm, and Git Ops good practices whilst reviewing infrastructure changes
* Design Git Ops workflows using ArgoCD and architect self-service capabilities through Backstage portal
* Plan cloud platform (internally and AWS), managing cost optimisation and infrastructure budgets
* Establish platform standards for cloud, containerisation,…