Lead Platform Engineer

Lead Platform Engineer

Simulations Plus stands as a premier provider in the biopharma sector, offering advanced software and consulting services that enhance drug discovery, development, research, clinical trial operations, regulatory submissions, and commercialization.

Our comprehensive biosimulation solutions integrate artificial intelligence/machine learning, physiologically based pharmacokinetics, physiologically based biopharmaceutics, quantitative systems pharmacology/toxicology, and population PK/PD modeling approaches.

We also deliver simulation-enabled performance and intelligence solutions alongside medical communications support for clinical and commercial drug development. Our cutting-edge technology is licensed and utilized by leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and regulatory agencies worldwide.

Leadership truly cares about maintaining a positive culture and employee well-being. We offer fully remote work, flexible schedules, and generous vacation policy along with affordable health coverage, stock options, annual bonus, and more!

The Lead Platform Engineer will be responsible for the systems, tooling, and workflows that define how our engineers build, test, and ship software. This role drives foundational platform improvements—from monorepo architecture and modern C++ build pipelines to AI-assisted developer tooling and cloud infrastructure.

The role will lead major infrastructure initiatives including the modernization of our build environment and toolchain and management of source control and cloud infrastructure. The role will partner closely with engineering teams to ensure platform changes reduce friction, maintain build performance, and equip engineers to move fast on complex scientific software and requires working fluency across the scripting and tooling languages used throughout our stack.

Job Responsibilities:

• Build System Modernization
• Lead the design and implementation of a monorepo strategy, resolving cross-repository dependency management across a portfolio of scientific C++ libraries
• Own CMake build system architecture, ensuring reproducibility, incremental correctness, and performance through platform transitions
• Evaluate and evolve C++ package management (vcpkg or equivalent) to fit the target monorepo model
• Prototype and benchmark build configurations on target hardware to make data-driven toolchain recommendations
• Developer Environment and Tooling
• Own the infrastructure engineering and evolution of an AI-assisted developer IDE, including model gateway architecture, agent integrations, and developer workflow enhancements
• Evaluate and integrate AI model platforms (AWS Bedrock, GitHub Copilot, and others) into developer tooling via abstraction layers that allow model substitution without client-side changes
• Define and maintain developer environment standards, onboarding automation, and configuration-as-code practices
• Cross-Team Technical Leadership
• Serve as the primary technical decision-maker for developer platform infrastructure, communicating trade-offs clearly to engineering teams and senior stakeholders
• Partner with engineering leads to understand domain-specific build requirements for computationally intensive scientific software and factor them into platform decisions
• Coordinate infrastructure rollouts across teams, managing dependencies, sequencing, and risk mitigation
• Architecture and Technical Design
• Design and document platform architecture for build systems, developer tooling, and AI model integration
• Establish baselines and success metrics for platform initiatives (build time, cache hit rate, onboarding time)
• Identify and mitigate technical risks in infrastructure transitions before they affect engineering productivity
• Evaluate emerging developer productivity tools and make evidence-based adoption recommendations
• Infrastructure as Code and Source Control
• Own and administer the organization's GitHub presence, including repository structure, branch protection, access controls, and org-level policy enforcement
• Design and maintain GitHub Actions CI/CD workflows, including reusable workflows, composite actions, and self-hosted runner infrastructure integrated with build caching
• Manage infrastructure via Terraform, including module library, remote state, and drift detection
• Establish branching strategies, release workflows, and code review policies that scale across teams
• Quality, Observability, and Security
• Instrument build and tooling pipelines with metrics, logs, and alerts to detect regressions and measure improvements
• Ensure platform infrastructure meets security and compliance requirements, including credential and secrets management for cloud and AI services
• Maintain documentation and runbooks for all platform systems
• Other Duties as Assigned

Required Qualifications:

• Technical Expertise
• 6+ years of software engineering or platform/infrastructure engineering experience focused on developer productivity or build systems
• Hands-on experience with build systems, including incremental builds, dependency management, and toolchain configuration
• Experience modernizing legacy build tooling and replacing distributed compilation systems with modern caching alternatives (sccache, ccache, or similar)
• Experience with monorepo architecture and the trade-offs versus multi-repo approaches
• Familiarity with C++ package management systems such as vcpkg or Conan
• Working proficiency in Python and Node.js for build tooling, automation, and platform scripting
• Platform and Infrastructure
• Experience managing developer environment infrastructure, including endpoint provisioning, environment configuration, and onboarding automation
• Hands-on GitHub organization administration, including repository management, access control (teams, SSO/SAML), and policy enforcement
• Strong proficiency with GitHub Actions, including reusable workflows, composite actions, and self-hosted runner management
• Production Terraform experience, including module design, remote state management, and cloud provider integration
• Working knowledge of at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP), particularly compute and storage services used in CI/CD
• Leadership and Communication
• Track record of leading multi-team infrastructure initiatives with clear ownership and delivery
• Ability to articulate technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders and build alignment before large migrations
• Strong written communication skills for architecture decision records, technical documentation, and cross-team coordination

Preferred Qualifications:

• Domain Experience
• Experience in pharmaceutical, biotechnology, life sciences, or scientific computing software environments
• Familiarity with simulation or modeling software that involves computationally intensive C++ codebases
• Understanding of software development in regulated industries and the quality standards that apply
• Technical Specializations
• Experience with Bazel, Buck2, or other build systems suited to monorepo incremental builds
• Familiarity with R and its use in scientific computing or data analysis workflows
• Familiarity with LLM observability tooling (e.g., Langfuse, Helicone, Arize, or CloudWatch LLM metrics)
• Additional Skills
• Experience with agile development methodologies and working within a structured engineering organization
• Familiarity with inner-source or platform-team models of developer tooling ownership
• Understanding of security best practices for developer infrastructure, including secrets management and least-privilege access patterns

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or related field preferred
• Masters or PhD in computer science, software engineering, or related field a plus
• Certifications in cloud platforms or build systems preferred