Vice President of Platform Engineering

VP of Platform Engineering Location: Stone/Staffordshire Status: Permanent, Full Time Package: Competitive Salary, Remote/Home Working (with one-off allowance), Flexible Working, Development & Opportunity (Personal & Technical), Private Medical (Optical & Dental options), Matching Contributory Pension, 25 Days Leave + Public Holidays + Buy and Sell Scheme, Life Insurance, Referral Scheme, Employee Assistance Programme, Benefits Hub. Why we’re hiring a VP of Platform Engineering? The Vice President of Platform Engineering leads the management and evolution of our customer-facing environments, which span both on-premises deployments and cloud workloads. The VP will be responsible for establishing Instem’s self-service cloud capabilities, empowering wider engineering teams to leverage native cloud services safely and efficiently to enhance development velocity. This role requires a deep understanding of the Azure suite and will focus on transitioning legacy environments to modern cloud architectures, working closely with product engineering teams to ensure the right approaches are followed end-to-end to ensure cloud benefit is maximised. This position will oversee a small but focused team of Platform Engineers (approximately 10 FTEs) operating in cross-functional agile teams and will play a critical role in managing the stability of Instem’s infrastructure while driving innovation in cloud-native service delivery. In this role you will report into our CTO with open and direct lines of communication at all times. Who’s Instem? Well, we’re a global provider of bespoke industry leading software solutions and services, which facilitate the pre-clinical, and clinical phases of the drug discovery process. We have over fifteen products in our portfolio, used by over 700 pharmaceutical clients (including all the top 20!). Instem is a unique, solutions-based organisation. We’ve doubled in size over the last 3 years through new business and product enhancement, but also via acquisition. Our 5-year growth plan is progressive, and we need you to help us reach that next level! What’s the culture/environment like? For a global business of over 300 staff, we very much have a family feel. You’ll be part of a friendly, communal, solution based, flexible environment, where you’ll feel empowered, valued and accountable. We’ll invest in you as a person and encourage you to take part in companywide workshops for wellbeing, mental health, critical conversations, and strengths. What are you responsible for? Platform Engineering Leadership: Lead the strategy, architecture, and operational management of Instem’s customer-facing platforms, which include a combination of on-premises environments and cloud workloads. Establish and refine self-service cloud capabilities that enable internal engineering teams to securely and efficiently use Azure native services, accelerating the product development lifecycle. Collaborate closely with the CTO to align platform engineering strategies with broader business objectives and customer needs. Cloud Transformation & Legacy Environment Management: Spearhead the migration of legacy and on-premises systems to cloud platforms, developing clear and practical roadmaps for modernization. Ensure stable operation of existing on-premises deployments while simultaneously driving cloud adoption and establishing operational processes for hybrid environments. Implement best practices for cloud and infrastructure-as-code (IaC), focusing on automation, security, and scalability. Cloud Operations & Security: Working closely with the VP of Corporate IT & Security, oversee the secure, stable, and efficient operation of Instem’s cloud environments, ensuring optimal performance, cost efficiency, and risk management. Lead the development of cloud security frameworks and best practices that ensure a safe environment for both internal and customer-facing operations. Maintain disaster recovery and business continuity plans for both cloud and on-premises environments, ensuring high availability and resilience. Team Management: Manage and mentor a team of around 10 Platform Engineers, fostering a culture of excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement. Develop talent within the team, encouraging professional growth and knowledge-sharing while ensuring team members are proficient in Azure platforms. Drive cross-team collaboration to deliver scalable, reliable, and secure infrastructure solutions that align with product development needs. Automation & DevOps Practices: Champion the adoption of automation tools and practices that increase the speed and reliability of deployments, including infrastructure-as-code (IaC), CI/CD pipelines, and automated monitoring. Work closely with engineering teams to integrate DevOps methodologies and best practices across the platform, enabling seamless deployment and scaling of applications. Identify and implement tools and frameworks that drive operational efficiency, reduce manual effort, and increase the predictability of system performance. Vendor & Stakeholder Management: Build strong partnerships with cloud service providers and other major technology vendors to ensure Instem stays ahead of emerging trends and leverages the most advanced features and capabilities. Act as a key interface with internal stakeholders, ensuring platform engineering efforts are aligned with product development and customer success goals. Adherence to our Quality Management System (QMS) to ensure all work is handled securely, professionally and diligently. Skills you’ll need: Minimum of 10+ years of experience in infrastructure, cloud platform management, or DevOps roles, with a focus on Azure. Experience in managing traditional hosted environments (networking, compute, storage etc.), via managed data centre services or owned sites. Proven experience leading cloud transformation initiatives, including migration of legacy systems to cloud environments. Hands-on expertise in platform engineering, with a deep understanding of cloud infrastructure, on-premises management, containerization (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker), and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation). Strong understanding of cloud security practices, monitoring, and compliance requirements, including disaster recovery and high availability. Experience with automation, CI/CD pipelines, and the implementation of DevOps practices in a fast-paced engineering environment. Daily, millions of lives are improved by the Instem technologies and services that have been deployed by our clients. This is a fantastic opportunity for you to help save and prolong people’s lives, by doing what you do best! Instem stores and processes data using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Click below for more information regarding our privacy policy. #LI-KL1 #J-18808-Ljbffr