National AI Awards 2025Discover AI's trailblazers! Join us to celebrate innovation and nominate industry leaders.

Nominate & Attend

Lead Platform Engineer - Gen AI

Elanco
Lower Basildon
9 months ago
Applications closed

Related Jobs

View all jobs

User Experience Researcher

Vice President, Data Scientist

Lead Embedded Software Engineer

Lead Machine Learning Engineer

Lead Data Science Engineer

Senior Machine Learning Engineer

At Elanco (NYSE: ELAN) – it all starts with animals! As a global leader in animal health, we are dedicated to innovation and delivering products and services to prevent and treat disease in farm animals and pets.
We’re driven by our vision of ‘Food and Companionship Enriching Life’ and our approach to sustainability – the Elanco Healthy Purpose™ – to advance the health of animals, people, the planet and our enterprise. At Elanco, we pride ourselves on fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment.
We believe that diversity is the driving force behind innovation, creativity, and overall business success.
Here, you’ll be part of a company that values and champions new ways of thinking, work with dynamic individuals, and acquire new skills and experiences that will propel your career to new heights. Making animals’ lives better makes life better – join our team today! Role Title: Lead Platform Engineer – Gen AI    Location: UK - Hook (Hybrid type of work)   Team: Software Engineering & Platforms    Supervisor: IT Engineering Director    Career Progression: Engineering, Architecture, Analyst     Position Description:     Over the past 4 years Elanco IT has been on an incredibly exciting journey.
Separating from our parent company and standing up on our own gave us a once in a lifetime opportunity to build a modern technology stack free of the burden of large-scale technical debt.
We are now looking to take this one step further, leveraging newly established engineering capabilities to help Elanco deliver on customer needs faster than ever before.  This role is part of our new enterprise platform engineering team with a specific focus on generative AI capability and their implementation in Elanco.
This role will be working on the cutting edge of GenAI capability strategizing, build and supporting our own implementations in Elanco.
This is an incredibly exciting opportunity to not only work on cutting edge technology but to contribute to the continued growth of a new highly skilled engineering organisation.    To be successful in an engineering role in Elanco requires a highly motivated individual, with an innovative mindset and a willingness to drive tangible outcomes.
The individual must be able to articulate complex technical topics, collaborate with external partners and ensure quality delivery of the required solution.     Responsibilities:    Engineering  * Work with Principal Platform Engineer and Senior Product Owner to help drive direction of platform and automation capabilities including our internal technical products related to GenAI capabilities.  * Work with a diverse team on some of Elanco’s most exciting engineering initiatives helping drive secure, reliable, and efficient using the latest technology.  * Stay abreast of the latest AI research, trends, and technologies, and apply this knowledge to drive continuous improvement and innovation within the team.  * Look for continuous improvement opportunities in our core ecosystem identifying new ways to enhance application team and developer experience.  * Bring your expertise into a team of talented engineers and continually help shape where the team can help to better enable our secure, reliable, efficient vision.  * Follow the value mentality with opportunity to work across the engineering team helping to ‘walk in the shoes’ of application teams as well as operational engineering teams.  * Communicate progress, results, and insights to management and other stakeholders.      Daily / Monthly Responsibilities  * Build and run responsibilities for GenAI ensuring robust support folding into standard incident processes as the products mature.  * Help work with distributed teams across the business on how to consume AI/ML capabilities.  * Hands on code, build, govern and maintain.  * Working as part of a scrum team, deliver high quality technical deliverables.  * Designing and building solutions to support the automation of manual IT and business processes.  * Continually modernise software development processes using Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) techniques to ensure efficient and high-quality delivery.  * Establish strong partnerships with key service integrators (vendors), helping to support the adoption of automation capabilities.  * Establish a strong partnership with our application health program and Information Security, helping to identify opportunities and mitigate risks.  * Coach and mentor junior engineers, members of our student program to help build a strong connected organisation.   * Supporting application teams, internal and external, helping to resolve barriers related to building, deployment, and utilisation of engineering products.    Basic Qualifications:     * Must have experience in the following areas.  * Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, TensorFlow, PyTorch, and other AI/ML frameworks.  * Strong understanding of neural networks, natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, and other AI domains.  * Experience with cloud platforms and AI tools (e.g., Google Cloud, Azure).  * Familiarity with natural language processing or AI technologies (e.g LLMs such as ChatGPT or BARD, Embeddings, Prompt Engineering)  * Experience with data pipelines and preferably processing of documents (e.g using Google Cloud Fusion/Azure Data Factory)  * Demonstrated success in deploying AI solutions in real-world applications.  * Work closely with product managers, data scientists, software engineers, and other stakeholders to integrate AI solutions into existing and new products.  * Stay abreast of the latest AI research, trends, and technologies, and apply this knowledge to drive continuous improvement and innovation within the team.  * Strong background in either Python/Typescript  * Operational experience taking internal products and ensuring they are well maintained, supported, and iterated upon.  * Experience working with technical and non-technical team members to encourage adoption of new versions of software or products.
  * Working within a DevOps team including modern software development practices, covering Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD), Test-Driven Development (TDD), SDLC, etc.  * Familiarity working within an agile team. * * Experience in some of the following areas: * Experience working with Cloud Native design patterns, with a preference towards Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud.  * Hands-on Technical experience with at least some of our core technologies (Terraform, Ansible, Packer).  * Working with cloud cognitive services (e.g Azure Cloud Vision or Google Vision AI)  *  Working with AI/Embeddings technologies (e.g Google Matching Engine, Azure AI Studio, Vertex AI)  * Experience working in/with an infrastructure team advantageous.   * Experience with modern application architecture methodologies (Service Orientated Architecture, API-Centric Design, Twelve-Factor App, FAIR, etc.).  * Experience supporting digital platforms, including Integrations, Release Management, Regression Testing, Integrations, Data Obfuscation, etc.  * Knowledge of Azure Data Factory/ GCP Cloud Data Fusion, Microsoft Azure Machine Learning or GCP Cloud ML Engine, Azure Data Lake, Azure Databricks or GCP Cloud Dataproc.  * Experience scaling an “API-Ecosystem”, designing, and implementing “API-First” integration patterns.  * Experience working with authentication and authorisation protocols/patterns.    Other Information: Occasional travel may be required.  Elanco is an EEO/Affirmative Action Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status

National AI Awards 2025

Subscribe to Future Tech Insights for the latest jobs & insights, direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service.

Industry Insights

Discover insightful articles, industry insights, expert tips, and curated resources.

10 AI Recruitment Agencies in the UK You Should Know (2025 Job‑Seeker Guide)

Generative‑AI hype has translated into real hiring: Lightcast recorded +57 % year‑on‑year growth in UK adverts mentioning “machine learning”, “LLM” or “gen‑AI” during Q1 2025. Yet supply still lags. Roughly 18,000 core AI professionals work in the UK, but monthly live vacancies hover around 1,400–1,600. That mismatch makes specialist recruiters invaluable—opening stealth vacancies, advising on salary bands and fast‑tracking interview loops. But many tech agencies sprinkle “AI” on their website without an active desk. To save you time, we vetted 50 + consultancies and kept only those with: A registered UK head office (verified via Companies House). A named AI/Machine‑Learning or Data practice.

AI Jobs Skills Radar 2026: Emerging Frameworks, Languages & Tools to Learn Now

As the UK’s AI sector accelerates towards a £1 trillion tech economy, the job landscape is rapidly evolving. Whether you’re an aspiring AI engineer, a machine learning specialist, or a data-driven software developer, staying ahead of the curve means more than just brushing up on Python. You’ll need to master a new generation of frameworks, languages, and tools shaping the future of artificial intelligence. Welcome to the AI Jobs Skills Radar 2026—your definitive guide to the emerging AI tech stack that employers will be looking for in the next 12–24 months. Updated annually for accuracy and relevance, this guide breaks down the top tools, frameworks, platforms, and programming languages powering the UK’s most in-demand AI careers.

How to Find Hidden AI Jobs in the UK Using Professional Bodies like BCS, IET & the Turing Society

Stop Scrolling Job Boards and Start Tapping the Real AI Market Every week a new headline announces millions of pounds flowing into artificial-intelligence research, defence initiatives, or health-tech pilots. Read the news and you could be forgiven for thinking that AI vacancies must be everywhere—just grab your laptop, open LinkedIn, and pick a role. Yet anyone who has hunted seriously for an AI job in the United Kingdom knows the truth is messier. A large percentage of worthwhile AI positions—especially specialist or senior posts—never appear on public boards. They emerge inside university–industry consortia, defence labs, NHS data-science teams, climate-tech start-ups, and venture studios. Most are filled through referral or conversation long before a recruiter drafts a formal advert. If you wait for a vacancy link, you are already at the back of the queue. The surest way to beat that dynamic is to embed yourself in the professional bodies and grassroots communities where the work is conceived. The UK has a dense network of such organisations: the Chartered Institute for IT (BCS); the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) with its Artificial Intelligence Technical Network; the Alan Turing Institute and its student-driven Turing Society; the Royal Statistical Society (RSS); the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) and its Mechatronics, Informatics & Control Group; public-funding engines like UK Research and Innovation (UKRI); and an ecosystem of Slack channels and Meetup groups that trade genuine, timely intel. This article is a practical, step-by-step guide to using those networks. You will learn: Why professional bodies matter more than algorithmic job boards Exactly which special-interest groups (SIGs) and technical networks to join How to turn CPD events into informal interviews How to monitor grant databases so you hear about posts months before they exist Concrete scripts, portfolio tactics, and outreach rhythms that convert visibility into offers Follow the playbook and you move from passive applicant to insider—the colleague who hears about a role before it is written down.