Head of Platform Engineering

Cellular Origins

Cambridge

On-site

GBP 120,000 - 180,000

Full time

47 hours ago

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Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

25 days holiday

Employer pension contribution of 10%

Private medical insurance forEmployees

Subsidised lunches

Enhanced family friendly leave

Life insurance worth 6x salary

Electric car leasing scheme

Cycle to work scheme

Season ticket loan

Job summary

Cellular Origins is seeking a highly experienced leader to head Platform Engineering, overseeing software, hardware, robotics and integration. You will shape the engineering strategy and build an organisation that delivers coherent, scalable core technology for cell therapy manufacturing.

You will partner with Product and Operations to meet customer needs, drive execution, and mentor leaders across disciplines, ensuring quality and reliability across the platform.

Qualifications

Experience leading a large, multidisciplinary engineering department.
Proven track record with automation, robotics, or complex capital equipment.
Broad credibility across software, embedded systems, electronics, hardware and controls.
Platform mindset balancing architecture, modularity, and lifecycle needs.
Rigour in quality, safety, design assurance and configuration control.
Strong commercial sense and ability to balance scope, cost and risk.
Clear communicator with senior stakeholders.
Experience in regulated or high-reliability environments is desirable.

Responsibilities

Set platform engineering strategy and roadmaps.
Lead leaders of software, hardware, robotics, and integration.
Ensure coherence, reliability and scalability of core platform.
Collaborate with Product, Customer Delivery and Operations to align plans.
Represent the platform to customers, partners and suppliers.

Skills

Leadership

System complexity

Platform engineering

Software & hardware

Robotics integration

Quality & validation

Cost and risk balance

Stakeholder influence

Clear communication

High reliability / regulated env

Job description

Cellular Origins

Cell therapies are creating new possibilities for patients with diseases that have previously been incurable. Making those therapies available to more people depends on manufacturing them reliably, repeatedly and at scale. Cellular Origins is building the automation platform that makes that possible.

Company Description

Cellular Origins is building the automation platform that makes that possible. We are looking for an exceptional engineering leader to take departmental leadership of the teams developing our core technology platform. Reporting directly to the COO, you will lead through the leaders of Software, Hardware, Robotics and Integration. You will work as a peer to our Head of Product and Application Development, Head of Operations and Head of Customer Delivery. This is one of our most consequential leadership hires. We have talented people, ambitious technology and demanding customer programmes. Your impact will be measured in clarity, pace and follow-through: aligning specialists around a small number of priorities, closing decisions, removing barriers and building an engineering organisation that delivers without relying on heroics. Few engineering leadership roles combine this breadth of technology, organisational influence and human purpose. You will shape both the core platform and the engineering capability behind a new model of cell therapy manufacturing, with direct access to senior leadership and the scope to make a visible difference quickly.

Job Description

This role is key in an important phase of growth for Cellular Origins, with authority over mission critical decisions and chance to have real organisation impact. Cellular Origins has established an Engineering Department to provide the professional homes in which capability, standards and careers are built. Cross-departmental programmes bring those capabilities together around product developments and customer outcomes. You will own the Platform Engineering capability.

Your mandate spans Engineering strategy and execution: best practice, appropriate process, resources, skills, leadership development and succession. Working alongside those leading Product and Application Development, Customer Delivery and Operations, you will meet urgent programme needs without compromising platform coherence, reliability or scalability.

What You Will Own

Set direction and priorities. Translate company and product strategy into a clear platform-engineering strategy, a prioritised roadmap, and credible investment, capacity and resource choices.
Leadership. Lead and develop the team leaders for software, hardware, electronics and firmware, robotics and systems integration. Set clear expectations, establish accountability, give direct feedback and build a strong succession plans.
Drive delivery. Make priorities visible, demand realistic plans, use meaningful measures, surface risk early, resolve blockers and intervene decisively where work is drifting.
Set engineering standards. Establish and continually improve the practices needed to engineer complex systems well, including architecture, design review, integration, verification and validation, configuration and change control, reliability, maintainability and lifecycle support.
Protect and evolve the platform. Assure the coherence of the core technology platform and the quality of major technical decisions. Balance immediate customer needs with reuse, modularity, technical debt, product integrity and long-term scale.
Make the matrix work. Partner with the Head of Product and Application Development to turn product and application priorities into executable platform plans; with Customer Delivery leadership on commitments, sequencing and resource trade-offs; and with Operations leadership on design for manufacture, supply, installation, service and support.
Represent platform engineering externally. Lead critical technical conversations with customers, partners and suppliers, building confidence through clarity, sound judgement and reliable delivery.
Build future capability. Work with others to evolve the department to meet the needs of the business, creating talent plans, skill strategy, professional development, knowledge sharing and succession so the department is ready for the next stage of the business.

Qualifications

Leadership. Proven experience leading a substantial multidisciplinary engineering department through senior managers or discipline leaders, with clear evidence of improving delivery and organisational performance through coaching, setting a high bar, handling performance directly, shaping organisations, hiring well and building skills and succession.
Relevant system complexity. Experience taking integrated automation, robotics, electromechanical systems or other complex capital equipment from concept through integration, deployment and support.
Technical breadth and systems judgement. Credibility across software, embedded systems, electronics, hardware, controls, robotics and integration; able to challenge experts and close cross-disciplinary decisions.
A platform mindset. Experience balancing architecture, modularity, reuse, technical debt and lifecycle needs with the immediate demands of products, applications and customer programmes.
Engineering rigour. A practical command of quality, safety, design assurance, verification and validation, configuration and change, reliability and continuous improvement.
Commercial and customer judgement. The ability to balance scope, cost, resources, timescales and technical risk, and to represent engineering credibly with customers, partners and suppliers.
Clear communication and influence. The ability to create alignment across technical and non-technical groups, explain complex choices simply and build confidence with senior stakeholders.
Useful context, not a narrow pedigree. Experience in a regulated, safety-critical or high-reliability environment would be valuable. Life sciences or GMP experience is helpful but not essential.

The leadership style we value

You listen widely, then decide. You are direct, fair, calm under pressure and low ego. You stay close enough to delivery to see reality and remove blockers, but you build leaders and systems that do not depend on you for every answer. You are proactive, curious and relentless about follow-through.

Additional Information

Cellular Origins is based at Melbourn Science Park, just 10 miles south of Cambridge. Our newly renovated premises offer modern office, laboratory and engineering spaces, surrounded by green spaces. We foster an entrepreneurial and collaborative culture, where ideas are encouraged, innovation thrives, and everyone has the freedom to do their best work.