Software Engineering Lead

Software Engineering Lead

Are you a collaborative Software Engineering Lead looking to work for a mission driven global organization?

The AI Platform (US) team builds and operates shared AI capabilities that power more than 13 products across the company. Our mission is to enable product teams to safely, reliably, and efficiently embed generative AI into their workflows — without each team reinventing core infrastructure, patterns, or controls.

We focus on building reusable, production-grade AI services, developer tooling, and platform abstractions that allow downstream teams to move fast while maintaining high standards for scalability, security, and observability.

We are seeking a Software Engineering Lead to provide hands-on technical leadership for the AI Platform (US) team. In this role, you will guide the design and delivery of shared AI services, lead a group of engineers, and act as a key technical partner to product, research, and platform stakeholders.

You will balance writing high-quality code with leading technical execution, shaping designs, unblocking delivery, and ensuring the platform scales across many consumers and use cases. This role sits between senior engineers and principal-level leadership, with strong ownership of outcomes and day-to-day technical direction.

Responsibilities include:

• Providing technical leadership for the AI Platform team, guiding design and implementation of shared AI services and components.
• Owning the technical delivery of platform initiatives, ensuring solutions meet requirements for scalability, reliability, security, and maintainability.
• Designing, developing, and maintaining backend services and APIs, primarily in Python, with some Java.
• Translating architectural guidance into concrete, well-structured implementations and iterative delivery plans.
• Partnering with product managers, research, and downstream engineering teams to turn AI prototypes into production-ready platform capabilities.
• Establishing and enforcing engineering best practices across the team, including testing, CI/CD, observability, and operational readiness.
• Reviewing designs and code, providing clear, constructive feedback and maintaining a high-quality bar.
• Mentoring and support engineers through pairing, code reviews, and technical coaching.
• Operating within a Kubernetes (EKS) environment, contributing to deployment, scaling, and runtime stability of AI services.
• Proactively identifying technical risks, dependencies, and bottlenecks, and drive them to resolution.
• Contributing to cross-team alignment, ensuring the AI Platform integrates cleanly with broader platform and product ecosystems.

What We're Looking For:

• Extensive professional software engineering experience.
• Demonstrated experience acting as a technical lead on complex backend or platform systems.
• Proficiency in Python, with working knowledge of Java.
• Solid backend engineering fundamentals: API design, data modelling, concurrency, and distributed systems.
• Experience building or integrating AI/LLM-powered systems, and familiarity with modern AI frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph).
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes (EKS) and cloud-native application development.
• Proven ability to balance hands-on development with technical leadership and coordination.
• Experience working in Agile or Kanban teams, collaborating across functions.

Elsevier is a renowned global information analytics company that primarily focuses on providing scientific, technical, and medical (STM) research content, tools, and services. It is one of the largest publishers of academic journals and scholarly literature in the world.

U.S. National Base Pay Range: $115,400 - $192,300. Geographic differentials may apply in some locations to better reflect local market rates.

This job is eligible for an annual incentive bonus.

We are committed to providing a fair and accessible hiring process. If you have a disability or other need that requires accommodation or adjustment, please let us know by completing our Applicant Request Support Form or please contact View phone number on click.appcast.io.

We are an equal opportunity employer: qualified applicants are considered for and treated during employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship status, disability status, protected veteran status, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.