Senior Principal - Platform Engineer Network Capabilities

GSK; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 2,500,000 - 4,000,000; Full time

Job summary

GSK is seeking a Principal Engineer to design, build and operate shared network capabilities as automated, secure, self-service infrastructure. You will push AI-assisted coding, enforce secure-by-default standards and mentor engineers while aligning with platform OKRs.

You will lead reliability initiatives, instrument observability, and drive automated fixes, partnering with the Platform Architect and Engineering Director to shape the platform roadmap.

Qualifications

• Degree in technology or engineering or equivalent practical experience.
• Relevant cloud certifications desirable (AWS, GCP or Azure).
• Kubernetes Administrator certification or similar is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and automate platform infrastructure using infrastructure-as-code and golden paths.
• Use AI-assisted engineering across code generation, review and testing to accelerate delivery and raise quality.
• Build self-service capabilities and paved roads to reduce friction for consuming teams.
• Engineer for reliability by defining SLOs, instrumenting platforms for observability and reducing toil.
• Set and uphold engineering standards, secure-by-default practices and code quality in reviews.
• Contribute to incident response and drive permanent automated fixes with Reliability Engineering.
• Mentor and technically lead other engineers, including partner engineers, aligning work with platform OKRs.
• Integrate supplier or managed-service components to platform standards.

Skills

Automation-first

Code review

Mentoring ability

AI judgement

Customer mindset

Debt visibility

Education

Technology/Engineering degree

Cloud certifications desirable (AWS/GCP/Azure)

Kubernetes Administrator certification

Tools

Terraform

CI/CD pipelines

Containers

Kubernetes

Job description

Business Introduction

GSK remains committed to achieving bold commercial ambitions for the future. By 2031, we aim to deliver £40 billion in annual sales, leveraging our existing strong performance momentum to significantly increase our positive impact on the health of billions of patients globally. Our Ahead Together strategy is centred on early intervention to prevent and alter the course of disease, thereby protecting people and supporting healthcare systems. Our diverse portfolio consists of vaccines, specialty medicines, and general medicines. Through continuous innovation and a dedicated focus on scientific and technical excellence, we strive to develop and launch new, groundbreaking treatments that address critical health challenges.

Job Purpose

The Principal Engineer builds and runs GSK's shared network capabilities such as DNS, DHCP and IP address management platform as automated, secure, self-service infrastructure, sets the engineering standard within that platform, mentors the engineers around them, and treats the teams who consume the platform as customers. The role works through infrastructure-as-code and golden paths rather than manual configuration, uses AI-assisted engineering across code generation, review and testing, and engineers reliability in by defining SLOs, instrumenting for observability and automating away toil. This is the senior hands-on engineering role in the platform team, working across shared network capabilities such as DNS, DHCP and IP address management to integrate and assure delivery as well as building. Engineering roadmap and direction sit with the Engineering Director, reference architecture and standards sit with the Platform Architect, backlog order sits with the Product Owner, and deep reliability engineering sits with the Site Reliability Engineer deployed from Reliability Engineering & Operations.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build and automate platform infrastructure using infrastructure-as-code and golden paths, so that provisioning is repeatable rather than reconstructed each time.
• Use AI-assisted engineering across code generation, review and testing to accelerate delivery and raise quality, reviewing AI-generated output before it is merged.
• Build self-service capabilities and paved roads that reduce friction for consuming teams, so adoption does not depend on the platform team's availability.
• Engineer for reliability by defining SLOs, instrumenting platforms for observability and automating to reduce toil, working with the Site Reliability Engineer on standards.
• Set and uphold engineering standards, secure-by-default practices and code quality within the platform, and hold them in code review.
• Contribute to incident response and drive permanent automated fixes with Reliability Engineering rather than repeating manual recovery.
• Mentor and technically lead other engineers, including partner engineers, linking engineering work to platform OKRs and outcomes.
• Integrate and assure supplier or managed-service components, holding partner-delivered engineering to the same standards and code quality as internal work.
• Work the platform's manual task and toil backlog, converting identified candidates into automation and evidencing the effort removed.
• Close observability coverage gaps for the platform, so that reliability can be measured rather than inferred.
• Contribute engineering-led items to the platform backlog held by the Product Owner, including technical debt, upgrade and automation work, with the cost of not doing them stated.
• Apply the reference architectures and patterns set by the Platform Architect, and raise a case for change rather than diverging locally.

Professional Qualifications

• Degree in a technology or engineering discipline, or equivalent practical experience (e.g., Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electronics).
• Relevant technical certifications desirable (e.g., a recognised cloud certification for AWS, GCP or Azure, Certified Kubernetes Administrator, or a network vendor certification relevant to the platform).

Area of Specialisation

• Hands-on platform engineering in cloud, network or digital workplace, covering infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD and containers where relevant.
• Automation-first and secure-by-default engineering, with an SRE mindset covering SLOs, observability and toil reduction.

Experience Required

• Overall 15 years and typically 6-8 years in platform, infrastructure or software engineering, including at least two years as the senior technical voice in a team.
• Deep hands-on depth in the relevant platform domain, whether cloud and hosting, network or digital workplace.
• Practical experience of infrastructure-as-code, for example Terraform, applied to production estates rather than proofs of concept.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, and with containers and Kubernetes where relevant to the platform.
• Track record building self-service capability that other teams adopted without hand-holding.
• Experience instrumenting for observability, defining SLOs and reducing toil through automation.
• Experience with AI-assisted engineering tooling, including judgement about when generated output is not fit to merge.
• Extensive experience engineering shared network services such as Domain Name System, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and Internet Protocol address management.
• Strong knowledge of network access control, application programming interfaces, automation, monitoring and resilient service design.
• Evidence of improving service reliability, self service, deployment speed or operational efficiency.

Skills/Background

• Automation-first instinct, treating a repeated manual task as a defect rather than as work.
• Code review discipline, holding quality without becoming a bottleneck.
• Mentoring ability with engineers of varying experience, including partner engineers outside the line.
• Judgement about when AI-generated code is fit to merge and when it is not.
• Customer mindset toward consuming teams, who can route around a platform that is hard to use.
• Willignness to make technical debt and its cost visible rather than absorbing it silently.

#AGTech Skills

• AI Programming
• Automation
• Automation Technology
• Cloud Based Services
• Computer Programming
• Configuration Management (CM)
• Data Distribution Service (DDS)
• Data Management and Integration (DMI)
• IP Address Management (IPAM)
• Leadership
• Load Balancers
• Network Design
• Operational Technology (OT)
• Packet Switching
• Security Engineering
• Security Management
• Software-Defined Networking Wide Area Network (SD-WAN)
• System Monitors
• Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI)
• Wireless System Design
• Zero Trust Architecture

Why GSK?

Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. GSK is a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We aim to positively impact the health of 2.5 billion people by the end of the decade, as a successful, growing company where people can thrive. We get ahead of disease by preventing and treating it with innovation in specialty medicines and vaccines. We focus on four therapeutic areas: respiratory, immunology and inflammation; oncology; HIV; and infectious diseases – to impact health at scale. People and patients around the world count on the medicines and vaccines we make, so we’re committed to creating an environment where our people can thrive and focus on what matters most. Our culture of being ambitious for patients, accountable for impact and doing the right thing is the foundation for how, together, we deliver for patients, shareholders and our people. We are a global biopharma company with a special purpose – to unite science, technology and talent to get Ahead Together – so we can positively impact the health of billions of people and deliver stronger, more sustainable shareholder returns – as an organisation where people can thrive. Getting ahead means preventing disease as well as treating it, and we aim to impact the health of 2.5 billion people around the world in the next 10 years. Our success absolutely depends on our people. While getting ahead of disease together is about our ambition for patients and shareholders, it’s also about making GSK a place where people can thrive. We want GSK to be a place where people feel inspired, encouraged and challenged to be the best they can be. A place where they can be themselves – feeling welcome, valued and included. Where they can keep growing and look after their wellbeing. So, if you share our ambition, join us at this exciting moment in our journey to get Ahead Together. Find out more on our career site.

Inclusion at GSK

As an employer committed to Inclusion, we encourage you to reach out if you need any adjustments during the recruitment process. Please contact our Recruitment Team at [e-mail] to discuss your needs.