Lab Platform Engineer

Job Description

We aspire to be the premier research-intensive biopharmaceutical company. We're at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions that advance the prevention and treatment of diseases in people and animals. Join our team and be a part of a company that uses the power of leading-edge science to save and improve lives around the world.

Responsibilities

• Operate independently within a defined product and platform scope.
• Own technical direction, reliability, and lifecycle outcomes for assigned systems and integrations.
• Apply sound technical judgment in regulated, complex, and ambiguous situations.
• Lead incident resolution, technical vendor coordination, and post-incident follow-up.
• Provide technical leadership during critical events and contribute to engineering standards, runbooks, and mentoring.
• Serve as the primary or secondary technical owner for assigned Sample & Reagent Inventory platforms, including Benchling-enabled and legacy capabilities.
• Own platform health, resilience, and technical evolution through monitoring, incident triage, root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and technical documentation.
• Assess platform risks, prioritize technical work with product owners, and communicate status, impacts, and recommendations to stakeholders.
• Contribute to target-state architecture diagrams and technical roadmaps for assigned systems.
• Act as the technical owner for the ZONTAL ELN archival platform.
• Maintain the platform's operational readiness, access model, integration health, and archival data availability.
• Coordinate changes, incident resolution, vendor engagement, and lifecycle planning for the platform.
• Partner with business, quality, records, security, and architecture stakeholders to manage risks associated with archived laboratory data.
• Lead investigation and resolution of business-impacting incidents across applications, integrations, data, and connectivity layers.
• Coordinate post-incident reviews, root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and knowledge capture.
• Participate in deployment readiness, go-live engineering, rollback planning, and post-deployment stabilization.
• Improve platform engineering practices, monitoring, runbooks, and operational metrics for assigned platforms.
• Own or co-own integrations between SaaS platforms, legacy systems, and internal enterprise services.
• Diagnose integration and data-consistency issues across application, API, data, identity, and network layers.
• Apply working knowledge of AWS services, enterprise networking, and connectivity patterns to troubleshoot and improve platform reliability.
• Apply awareness of the Purdue Model and ISA-95 concepts when assessing system boundaries, connectivity, segmentation, and risk in laboratory and enterprise environments.
• Collaborate with infrastructure, security, architecture, and data teams to resolve complex technical issues.
• Use approved AI-enabled tools to improve engineering analysis, incident triage, technical investigation, knowledge management, and routine operational automation.
• Identify practical opportunities to reduce manual operational effort through automation while maintaining appropriate security, data handling, validation, and human oversight.
• Evaluate AI-assisted outputs critically, validate recommendations against platform evidence, and document significant operational decisions.
• Engineer and govern platforms operating in regulated, audit-sensitive environments by following established validation, testing, change-control, and documentation processes.
• Identify security, access, data-protection, and integration risks; engage security and architecture partners early to mitigate them.
• Contribute to audits, technical reviews, remediation activities, and evidence collection as required.
• Lead technical engagement with external vendors for incident management, defect resolution, enhancements, upgrades, and deployment coordination.
• Build effective working relationships with product owners, laboratory stakeholders, quality partners, and cross-functional IT teams.
• Collaborate effectively across Prague, US, and India teams to align technical decisions, coordinate delivery, and maintain continuity across time zones.
• Communicate complex technical issues, risks, options, and recommendations clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Contribute to technical documentation, engineering standards, technical knowledge sharing, and reusable diagnostic practices.
• Mentor junior engineers through technical guidance and incident leadership.
• Promote reliable, secure, and maintainable platform operations across the product line.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience.
• Typically 4+ years of experience engineering, owning, or administering enterprise software platforms, LIMS/ELN platforms, or SaaS solutions.
• Demonstrated experience with enterprise platform operations, incident management, root-cause analysis, and service restoration.
• Experience troubleshooting system integrations and data flows across application, API, identity, data, and connectivity layers.
• Working knowledge of AWS services and enterprise networking concepts.
• Awareness of the Purdue Model and ISA-95 concepts, including system boundaries, segmentation, and connectivity considerations.
• Demonstrated ability to apply approved AI-enabled tools to operational analysis, troubleshooting, automation, or knowledge management with appropriate human oversight.
• Experience coordinating technical work with external vendors and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with distributed teams across geographies and time zones.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate operational risks and recommendations clearly.

Preferred

• Experience as a technical owner or senior platform engineer for comparable LIMS, ELN, sample-management, or laboratory platforms.
• Familiarity with Benchling, ZONTAL, or comparable laboratory informatics and archival systems.
• Experience with vendor-hosted SaaS platforms and enterprise integrations.
• Experience in GxP, validated, audit-sensitive, life-sciences, research, or laboratory environments.
• Experience creating or maintaining target-state architecture diagrams for assigned systems.
• Familiarity with IT/OT security principles, network segmentation, and enterprise identity and access management.

What we offer:

• Exciting work in a great team, global projects, international environment
• Opportunity to learn and grow professionally within the company globally
• Hybrid working model, flexible role pattern
• Competitive salary & incentive pay
• Pension and health insurance contributions
• Internal reward system and referral scheme
• 5 weeks annual leave, 5 sick days, 15 days of certified sick leave paid above statutory requirements annually, 40 paid hours annually for volunteering activities, 12 weeks of parental contribution
• Cafeteria for tax free benefits according to your choice (meal vouchers, sport, culture, health, travel, etc.), Multisport Card
• Vodafone, Raiffeisen Bank, Foodora, and discount programmes
• Up-to-date laptop and iPhone
• Parking in the garage, showers, refreshments, massage chairs, library, music corner

Ready to take up the challenge? Apply now! Know anybody who might be interested? Refer this job!

Required Skills:

Computer Science, Data Engineering, Data Visualization, Design Applications, Enterprise Software Implementation, Incident Management, Laboratory Informatics, Life Science, Operational Decisions, Oral Communications, Platform Engineering, Platform Management, Project Procurement Management, Sample Management, Software Configurations, Software Development, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Solution Architecture, System Designs, System Integration, Systems Engineering, Testing

Preferred Skills:

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Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

25%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

1st - Day

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

08/22/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.