Head of Platform Engineering & Operations

Denali Therapeutics Inc; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 159,000 - 207,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) Plan

Healthcare benefits

Employee stock purchase plan

Job summary

Denali Therapeutics Inc. is seeking a senior IT leader to own Platform Engineering and Operations across multiple sites, including South San Francisco.

You will set operational agendas, drive architectural decisions, and scale the team to support AI infrastructure and validated platforms. You will partner with risk, quality, and cybersecurity, maintain compliance with SOX and GxP, and lead change control, DR/BCP, and vendor relationships.

Qualifications

• 9+ years in progressive IT roles with leadership responsibility.
• 3+ years directly leading teams, building structures and cadences.
• Experience setting operational agenda and contributing to strategy decisions.
• Experience maintaining standards through attrition and competing priorities.
• Experience with vulnerability management, patching, and SLA-driven programs.
• Experience operating within architectural governance and ITIL-aligned service management.
• Experience in regulated life sciences environments (GxP, 21 CFR 11, SOX ITGC).

Responsibilities

• Lead IT Infrastructure as a function, owning agenda, rhythms, and standards.
• Build management structures, escalation paths, and accountability mechanisms.
• Anticipate risks, capacity constraints, and capability gaps; act proactively.
• Represent Platform Engineering to enterprise platform strategy, including AI infra.
• Lead DR/BCP, change control, and QSR content delivery.
• Oversee platform delivery of AI workloads and enterprise platforms (ERP, clinical data).
• Manage vendors and contractors; develop team operating cadences and on-call rotations.

Skills

IT leadership

Platform engineering

IT service management

Regulated life sciences

GxP, 21 CFR 11

SOX ITGC

ITIL frameworks

Multi-cloud (AWS/GCP/Azure)

Strategic stakeholder communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in IT or related field

Tools

Workato

Databricks

Reltio

ITSM tooling

Job description

Denali Therapeutics Inc. is seeking a senior IT leader to own Platform Engineering and Operations across multiple sites, including South San Francisco.

You will set operational agendas, drive architectural decisions, and scale the team to support AI infrastructure and validated platforms. You will partner with risk, quality, and cybersecurity, maintain compliance with SOX and GxP, and lead change control, DR/BCP, and vendor relationships.