Compute Platform Engineer II

GSK; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

GSK is seeking a Compute Platform Engineer II to enhance data capabilities focused on accelerating application development and optimizing complex solutions. This role involves building a hybrid compute platform, engaging with various stakeholders, and ensuring the robustness of services.

The ideal candidate will have a Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field, strong expertise in Python and Cloud technologies, along with significant experience in high-performance computing.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional experience.
• Experience with Python and Cloud technologies.
• Familiarity with application performance tuning in distributed computing.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate tools for key business solutions.
• Develop components for hybrid on-prem/cloud compute platform.
• Consult with users on application scalability to large datasets.

Skills

Python

Cloud (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Azure)

High Performance Computing (HPC)

Software Development Best Practices

DevOps

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Data Engineering, Computer Science, or Software Engineering

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Git/GitHub

CI/CD tools (e.g., Azure DevOps, Jenkins)

Job description

At GSK, we want to supercharge our data capability to better understand our patients and accelerate our ability to discover vaccines and medicines. The Onyx Research Data Platform organization represents a major investment by GSK R&D and Digital & Tech, designed to deliver a step‑change in our ability to leverage data, knowledge, and prediction to find new medicines.

We are a full‑stack shop consisting of product and portfolio leadership, data engineering, infrastructure and DevOps, data / metadata / knowledge platforms, and AI/ML and analysis platforms, all geared toward:

• Building a next‑generation, metadata‑and‑automation‑driven data experience for GSK’s scientists, engineers, and decision‑makers, increasing productivity and reducing time spent on “data mechanics”
• Providing best‑in‑class AI/ML and data analysis environments to accelerate our predictive capabilities and attract top‑tier talent
• Aggressively engineering our data at scale, as one unified asset, to unlock the value of our unique collection of data and predictions in real time

The Compute Platform Engineering team is building a first‑in‑class platform of toolchains and workflows that accelerate application development, scale up computational experiments, and integrate all computation with project metadata, logs, experiment configuration and performance tracking over abstractions that encompass Cloud and High‑Performance Computing (HPC). This metadata‑forward, CI/CD‑driven platform represents and enables the entire application and analysis lifecycle including interactive development and explorations (notebooks), large‑scale batch processing, observability and production application deployments.

A Compute Platform Engineer II is a technical contributor who can consistently take a poorly defined business or technical problem, work it to a well‑defined problem/specification, and execute on it at a high level. They have a strong focus on metrics, both for the impact of their work and for its inner workings/operations. They are a model for the team on best practice for software development in general (and their specialization in particular), including code quality, documentation, DevOps, and testing. They ensure robustness of our services and serve as an escalation point in the operation of existing services, pipelines, and workflows.

A Compute Platform Engineer II should be familiar with the tools of their specialization and of their customers and engaged with the open‑source community surrounding them – potentially, even to the level of contributing pull requests.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate tools, services, workflows, etc. that deliver high value through the solution to key business problems
• Develop key components of a hybrid on‑prem/cloud compute platform for both interactive and scalable batch computing and establish processes and workflows to transition existing HPC users and teams to this platform
• Develop code‑driven environment, applications, and container/image builds as well as CI/CD‑driven application deployments
• Consult science users on application scalability to PBs of data by having a deep understanding of software engineering, algorithms, and underlying hardware infrastructure and their impact on performance
• Confidently optimize design and execution of complex solutions within large‑scale distributed computing environments
• Produce well‑engineered software, including appropriate automated test suites, technical documentation, and operational strategy
• Ensure consistent application of platform abstractions to ensure quality and consistency with respect to logging and lineage
• Fully versed in coding best practices and ways of working, and participate in code reviews and partnership to improve the team’s standards
• Adhere to QMS framework and CI/CD best practices and help guide improvements that enhance ways of working

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Data Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field
• 4+ years of professional experience
• Experience with Python
• Experience with Cloud
• Experience with High Performance Compute (HPC)

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge and use of at least one programming language such as Python, Go, C++, Scala, or Java, including toolchains for documentation, testing, and operations/observability
• Experience with modern software development tools and practices (e.g., Git/GitHub, DevOps tools, metrics/monitoring)
• Cloud expertise (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Azure), including infrastructure‑as‑code tools and scalable compute technologies such as Google Batch and Vertex
• Experience with CI/CD implementations using Git and a common CI/CD stack (e.g., Azure DevOps, CloudBuild, Jenkins, CircleCI, GitLab)
• Expertise with Docker, Kubernetes, and the CNCF ecosystem, including application deployment tools such as Helm
• Experience with low‑level application build tools (make, CMake) and automated build systems such as Spack or EasyBuild
• Experience with workflow orchestration tools such as Argo Workflow, Airflow, Nextflow, Snakemake, VisTrails, or Cromwell
• Experience with application performance tuning and optimization in parallel and distributed computing paradigms, including MPI, OpenMP, Gloo, and a deep understanding of underlying systems
• Demonstrated excellence with agile software development environments using tools like Jira and Confluence
• Familiarity with tools, techniques, and optimizations in high‑performance applications space, including engagement with the open‑source community (and potentially making contributions)

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

GSK is an Equal Opportunity Employer. This ensures that all qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), parental status, national origin, age, disability, genetic information (including family medical history), military service or any basis prohibited under federal, state or local law.