Lead Engineer - Platform Engineering

elanco; Hook; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Elanco seeks a Lead Engineer - Platform Engineering in Hook, UK, to design and own reusable platform components and AI-enabled workflows. You will improve developer experience by embedding AI into the SDLC and building secure, scalable automation across teams.

You will collaborate with the Principal Platform Engineer, drive technical delivery, governance, and patterns, and mentor engineers while balancing hands-on work with leadership in a global, diverse environment.

Qualifications

• Experience in a platform team focused on developer experience.
• Hands-on software engineering with scripting and DevOps skills (Terraform/Ansible).
• Experience applying AI to engineering SDLC and secure governance.

Responsibilities

• Build AI ecosystem and components embedding AI into developers' tools (IDEs, CI/CD, source control).
• Own complex platform capabilities from design to deployment and improvement.
• Ensure security, governance and human-with-AI review across workflows.
• Plan, execute, and maintain agile delivery with visible dependencies and risks.
• Collaborate across teams to drive adoption and reduce operational risk.
• Define metrics to prove AI-enabled engineering improves outcomes.

Skills

Hands-on engineering

DevOps

Terraform

Ansible

AI in SDLC

Authentication

Leadership

Communication

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

CI/CD tools

Job description

At Elanco (NYSE: ELAN) – it all starts with animals!

As a global leader in animal health, we are dedicated to innovation and delivering products and services to prevent and treat disease in farm animals and pets. At Elanco, we are driven by our vision of Food and Companionship Enriching Life and our purpose – all to Go Beyond for Animals, Customers, Society and Our People.

At Elanco, we pride ourselves on fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment. We believe that diversity is the driving force behind innovation, creativity, and overall business success. Here, you’ll be part of a company that values and champions new ways of thinking, work with dynamic individuals, and acquire new skills and experiences that will propel your career to new heights.

Making animals’ lives better makes life better – join our team today!

Your Role: Lead Engineer - Platform Engineering

As a Platform Engineer, your core mission is to improve Elanco’s developer experience by designing, building, and operating reusable platform capabilities and Golden Paths - curated, self-service workflows that reduce cognitive load and help teams apply established engineering practices consistently. By focusing on reuse, automation, and standardized tooling, you help product teams spend less time managing infrastructure and more time delivering business value.

This role makes AI-assisted engineering a safe, repeatable, and valuable part of how Elanco builds software and data products. You will independently own complex capabilities that embed AI and automation across the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), reducing toil while ensuring engineers remain accountable for architecture, quality, security, and production outcomes.

Position Scope

• Hands-on Individual Contributor: Personally design and implement important platform parts, resolve difficult engineering problems, review code/designs, and coach others through pairing and feedback.
• Situational Leadership: Technical leadership is shared and situational. You may lead the technical approach for a bounded initiative or contribute as a team member while another leads. This role carries no permanent line-management, team-lead, or delivery-management accountability.

Your Responsibilities

• Building the AI Ecosystem & Components: Partner with the Principal Platform Engineer and peers to turn agreed priorities into reliable capabilities. Build reusable components - such as secure model/tool integrations, context-retrieval tools, controlled agent workflows, evaluation harnesses, and human-approval controls - embedding AI directly into developers' existing tools (IDEs, CI/CD, source control, engineering portals).
• Technical Ownership & Delivery: Independently own complex platform capabilities through design, prototyping, coding, integration, testing, deployment, and ongoing improvement. Make reasoned design trade-offs, resolve multi-component problems across team boundaries, and partner with architecture, InfoSec, and product colleagues.
• Security, Governance & Human-with-AI Approach: Implement controlled mechanisms for AI access using least-privilege principles, robust auth, and data protection. Automate boilerplate work so engineers focus on architecture and edge cases, ensuring human review at every material decision point and actively mitigating AI-specific risks (e.g., prompt injection, insecure generated code, sensitive-data exposure).
• Planning, Execution & Agility: Break agreed outcomes into clear engineering work, make dependencies visible, provide evidence-based input on priorities, and raise delivery risks early. Balance rapid experimentation with the discipline required for reliable, secure systems, and participate actively in planning, retrospectives, and technical refinements.
• Collaboration & Enablement: Build trust with engineering teams by co-designing solutions. Create implementation patterns, playbooks, documentation, and reference solutions to drive consistent adoption. Influence stakeholders across the UK, US, and India, translating technical progress into business outcomes like reduced manual effort and lower operational risk.
• Measuring, Learning & Standards: Define and track metrics that prove AI enablement improves engineering outcomes (beyond mere tool usage), instrumenting workflows to monitor flow, quality, risk, and economic value. Run controlled experiments, establish quality thresholds before scaling, and contribute recommendations for shared engineering standards to governance groups.

What You Need to Succeed (Minimum Qualifications)

• Experience working in a platform team focused on developer experience.
• Proven track record of "hands-on" engineering (e.g., programming, scripting, markup languages) and DevOps skillsets with strong experience in Terraform, Ansible, or similar.
• Experience applying AI to an engineering SDLC.
• Experience working with authentication and authorization protocols and patterns.
• Proven track record of leading engineering teams through change.
• Demonstrated influence and communication skills across all levels of IT and third parties.
• Experience working in complex, diverse landscapes (business, technology, regulatory, partners, providers, geographies, etc.).
• Strong organizational and communication skills with multiple examples of conveying complex technical topics that resulted in a definitive direction.

Additional Information

• Travel: 0-10%
• Location: Hook, UK - Hybrid Work Environment

Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At Elanco we are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive work environment. If you think you might be a good fit for a role but don't necessarily meet every requirement, we encourage you to apply. You may be the right candidate for this role or other roles!

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Elanco is an EEO/Affirmative Action Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status

Elanco may use automated tools, including AI, to support parts of our recruitment process, such as reviewing applications against job‑related criteria and/or transferrable skills. These tools help ensure a consistent, structured evaluation, but they do not make hiring decisions. All decisions involve a human reviewer. For more information on how we handle personal data, please see our Elanco Workforce Privacy Notice.