Principal Platform Engineer

At Automata, we are on a mission to transform how scientists work by making automation accessible to every lab in the world. We believe that by giving labs the power to automate, we can unlock discoveries that will shape the future of life sciences—from diagnostics and drug discovery to synthetic biology. We design and operate a software platform that orchestrates robots, instruments, data pipelines, and increasingly AI-driven workflows, helping labs move from bespoke, fragile setups to scalable, software-defined automation.

Our systems sit at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, orchestration engines, and real-world physical constraints. We are a product-driven company operating at scale, with customers doing genuinely meaningful scientific work that saves lives. Our engineering challenges are real: complex workflows, reliability at scale, performance under constraints, and building platforms that can evolve as new products and capabilities are layered on.

We believe great products come from strong technical leadership, clarity of direction, and teams that move at pace. We work closely together, value in-person collaboration, and operate from a modern Central London office designed for focus, energy, and momentum.

Why Work at Automata?

• Impact: Your work will directly contribute to advancements in science and medicine, supporting labs around the globe as they push boundaries in research and innovation.
• Innovation: You’ll be part of a team solving complex problems using cutting-edge technology.
• Growth: We invest in our people. Through hands-on experience, professional development, or collaborative projects, you’ll grow both professionally and personally.
• Community: Join a diverse, passionate team that values collaboration and social activities.

Role

We are looking for a Principal Platform Engineer who will take full ownership of our platform foundations across cloud and on-prem, with a mandate to unify, simplify, automate, and harden everything that sits underneath our products. This is a top-end role with final authority over platform architecture, tooling, and standards. You will lead a small group of highly senior platform engineers, shape platform culture and execution, and ensure our infrastructure operates with 99.99% uptime, at scale, in highly constrained and regulated environments.

You have seen what great looks like and what breaks when shortcuts are taken. You know how to balance startup speed with enterprise-grade reliability, and you care deeply about reducing complexity, cost, and operational drag. The role reports into senior leadership and comes with growth opportunities as the organisation scales.

Who You Are

• An outcome-driven platform leader.
• You obsess over reliability, automation, and operational excellence.
• You believe the best platform is often the simplest possible one — fewer tools, fewer vendors, fewer moving parts.
• You are calm under pressure and experienced running systems that must be available 24/7.
• You are opinionated, but grounded in evidence, trade-offs, and real-world constraints.
• You communicate clearly and regularly, providing visibility into platform health, risks, and progress.
• You enjoy leading senior engineers, setting high standards, and building a culture of ownership and accountability.
• You are comfortable working across startups, scale-ups, and enterprise contexts and know which practices belong where.
• You take pride in building platforms that are secure, cost-efficient, low-latency, and boring in the best possible way.

What You Will Do

• Own platform architecture and unification: Define and own the unified cloud + on-prem platform architecture, spanning AWS and customer-hosted environments. Design systems that operate reliably across hybrid, semiair-gapped, and regulated deployments. Act as the final decision-maker on platform architecture, tooling, and vendors.
• Drive automation-first infrastructure: Lead full automation across the platform using Infrastructure as Code, GitOps, and CI/CD. Ensure environments are reproducible, auditable, and recoverable by design. Eliminate manual operations wherever possible.
• Reliability, uptime & operational excellence: Own availability targets across 20+ clusters, 4 regions, and multiple environments. Design and operate systems targeting 99.99% uptime, with clear SLOs, SLIs, and incident processes. Improve observability, alerting, incident response, and post-mortem culture.
• Security & compliance by design: Embed security deeply into platform architecture and delivery pipelines. Own platform alignment with ISO 27001 and GxP requirements. Reduce attack surface through simplification, standardisation, and automation.
• Cost optimisation & platform efficiency: Continuously optimise infrastructure cost without compromising reliability or security. Make cost trade-offs visible and intentional. Remove wasteful tooling, over-provisioning, and unnecessary platform complexity.
• Data & ML platform enablement: Support reliable execution of data pipelines and ML workflows within the platform. Partner with data and ML teams to ensure pipelines are scalable, secure, and operationally sound.
• Lead senior platform engineers: Lead and inspire Staff-level Platform Engineers. Set execution standards, delivery cadence, and technical expectations. Improve platform engineering culture, visibility, and predictability.
• Partner with product and engineering leadership: Translate product intent and operational requirements into platform architecture, roadmaps, and timelines. Operate as an execution partner to product teams and an advisory partner where appropriate. Provide clear, regular visibility into platform health, risks, and progress.

Your background

• Significant years of proven experience in platform, infrastructure, or SRE-focused engineering roles.
• Deep experience operating mission-critical, 24/7 systems with strict uptime requirements.
• Strong hands-on experience with Kubernetes, containerisation, CI/CD, IaC, and GitOps.
• Proven track record running hybrid cloud + on-prem platforms.
• Strong understanding of cloud economics and cost optimisation.
• Solid security mindset, including experience with regulated environments.
• Experience leading or heavily influencing senior platform engineers.
• Background across both startups/scale-ups and enterprise environments.

Growth & impact

This role offers real ownership today and meaningful growth tomorrow. You will define the foundations that every product and engineering team depends on, shape how the platform operates at scale, and build a culture of reliability and execution excellence. For the right person, this role naturally grows into VP-level ownership of Platform and Infrastructure.

If you care about elegant systems, ruthless simplification, and platforms that work under real-world constraints, this role will stretch and reward you.

UK Team Benefits

• Vitality Health Insurance
• Eye Care
• Salary Sacrifice - EV
• Salary Sacrifice - Bike & Tech
• Wellbeing & Support
• Wellbeing & Development Allowance
• Spill & Employee Assistance Programme
• Additional Leave
• Pension Scheme
• Group Life & Critical Illness cover

We are an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Discrimination of any kind based on race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status is strictly prohibited.