Principal Platform Engineer, Agentic AI Infrastructure

esqLABs GmbH; Niedersachsen; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

ESQlabs GmbH in Niedersachsen, Germany, seeks a senior backend/platform engineer to build an agentic AI framework atop the OSP Suite. You will define the deterministic compute core, the harness for AI agents, and the policy-driven, sandboxed execution environment with provenance and versioned APIs.

You will report to the CEO and collaborate with the engineering lead, platform engineers and R developers to ensure reproducible, secure, and compliant modeling workflows across Europe.

Qualifications

• At least five years of platform, infrastructure or backend engineering with senior ownership of a production system.
• Reproducible builds and execution: dependency pinning, artifact hashing, immutable versioning, supply chain integrity.
• Strong Python; comfort around R and scientific computing toolchains.
• API design with versioning and deprecation in practice.
• Security engineering for multi-tenant systems and awareness of AI governance for regulated software.
• DevOps practice at production grade: CI/CD, Kubernetes or equivalent orchestrator, observability, and release management.

Responsibilities

• Make the scientific compute core deterministic: pinned R, Python and solver toolchains, content-addressed images and verifiable re-execution.
• Build the harness: tool router, policy engine, sandboxed per-tenant executors, usage metering and provenance bundles.
• Expose the platform as a versioned API and share contract for AI agents with a reproducibility package.
• Run the evaluation pipeline in CI: conformance, re-execution, regression tests and per-procedure version storage.
• Own release engineering and operations: CI/CD, signed releases and environment management across deployments.
• Implement the technical controls behind information security and AI management standards.

Skills

Backend engineering

Python

R language

Containerization

API design

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Workflow systems

Job description

ESQlabs is an innovative, internationally active Contract Research Organization (CRO) and a global leader in the development and application of the Open Systems Pharmacology (OSP) Suite. We combine mechanistic modeling, Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetics (PBPK) and Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP), with software and training to support Model-Informed Drug Development (MIDD) and Next-Generation Risk Assessment (NGRA) for pharmaceutical, chemical, and academic partners worldwide. Our mission is to empower life sciences: helping scientists understand mechanisms of disease and chemical toxicity to optimize individualized, safer, and more efficient treatment and testing strategies.

We are now building an agentic AI framework on top of our open-source products: a platform in which AI agents orchestrate the OSP Suite and our other open-source tools to run regulated modeling workflows end to end.

About the role

You set up the agentic system that runs our analyses: the harness in which AI agents call our scientific tools under policy, the deterministic compute core they call, and the infrastructure that makes every run reproducible, metered, sealed and verifiable. The Quality Manager defines the standards; you implement them. You report to the CEO and work as a peer of our agentic engineering lead, with two platform engineers and the R developers who own the scientific tooling.

Key Responsibilities

• Make the scientific compute core deterministic: pinned R, Python and solver toolchains, content-addressed container images with a software bill of materials, and tests that prove byte-identical re-execution on a reference platform and tolerance-bounded re-execution across platforms.

• Build the harness: tool router, policy engine (allow-lists, parameter bounds, autonomy levels), sandboxed per-tenant executors without egress, usage metering per tool call, and the signed provenance bundle and certificate issuer behind every result.

• Expose the platform as a versioned API and as tools for AI agents with one shared contract, and ship the reproducibility package that re-executes a run outside the platform.

• Run the evaluation pipeline in continuous integration: conformance tests against reference case sets, re-execution tests, regression tests, results stored per procedure version.

• Own release engineering and operations: CI/CD pipelines, signed and content-addressed releases, scripted installation qualification, environment management (hosted, in a client tenant, later offline), monitoring, incident handling and the operating model the deployment engineer runs.

• Implement the technical controls behind the information security and AI management standards the Quality Manager owns.

What you bring

• At least five years of platform, infrastructure or backend engineering with senior ownership of a production system.

• Reproducible builds and execution in practice: dependency pinning, artifact hashing, immutable versioning, supply chain integrity. Hermetic build systems are a strong plus.

• Strong Python; comfort around R and scientific computing toolchains. Containers and infrastructure as code. Experience with workflow or DAG runtimes and with tool-calling systems for AI agents.

• API design where the schema was a contract with external consumers, including versioning and deprecation in practice.

• Security engineering for multi-tenant systems: isolation, secrets, authorization, and awareness of the risks of language-model-driven systems. Exposure to GxP or equivalent regulated software is valuable; interest in acquiring it is required.

• DevOps practice at production grade: CI/CD, Kubernetes or an equivalent orchestrator, observability, release management for environments you do not fully control.

What's in store for you

The dynamic team behind ESQlabs unites people with different backgrounds, spanning disciplines like pharmaceutical sciences, physics, bioinformatics, mathematics, data science, and software engineering. Our trust in each other, our open-mindedness, and our constant quest for excellence and innovation unite us. We value flat hierarchies, where everyone can contribute ideas and expertise to develop the best product. We are passionate, always willing to broaden our horizons, and love our start-up culture.

You will also benefit from:

• Flexible work hours and a home office policy that focuses on people and not on numbers

• An attractive remuneration package

• Regular in-person team gatherings at locations across Europe.

• A clearly defined technical problem with a commercial consequence, and the authority to solve it properly rather than quickly.

• A working environment in which your contribution will make a difference, and that allows you to take ownership of projects and processes

• A small, senior team that owns an open-source platform used by regulators and pharma, and the mandate to set the standard for certified scientific software.

• Responsibility, autonomy, participation, and career perspective

About us

We collaborate with global corporations in the pharma and chemical industry, as well as start-ups in the life-science technology sector and academic and non-profit research institutions. We define new standards in pharmacometrics and systems pharmacology and toxicology areas. Our software and model platforms help scientists understand mechanisms of diseases and chemical toxicity to optimize individualized treatment of patients and protect the health of the animal and human life.

ESQlabs has attracted international players as sponsors for the OSP Software development. In addition, funding through national and EU-wide research grants allows us to develop our core technologies continuously.

For more information about our culture, values and benefits visit our Unique career opportunities - esqLABS GmbH.

ESQlabs is an equal-opportunity employer. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of background, and value the diversity of perspectives this brings to our team.