Core Engineering Platform Engineer

Core Engineering Platform Engineer

Department: Technology / Group Technology
Employment Type: Contract / Freelance
Location: London / Hybrid
Reporting to: Core Engineering & Operations Manager

About the Role

We are looking for a Core Engineering Platform Engineer to help evolve and operate our enterprise technology platform in line with changing business requirements for corporate application hosting. This is a broad and technically varied role, with responsibility for the development, implementation, continuous improvement and operation of enterprise platform services across on-premises and public cloud environments. You will work as part of a Core Engineering team, providing engineering expertise across platform management, operational support, incident response, automation and continuous improvement. Automation is central to the way we work. We aim to continually reduce manual effort and operational toil by building reliable, repeatable and scalable solutions.

Our Technology Environment

The platform environment includes, but is not limited to:

• AWS: IaaS, PaaS and foundational enterprise services
• Microsoft Azure: Foundational services, IaaS and PaaS
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP): Foundational services
• Windows Server
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Rocky Linux
• Microsoft SQL Server
• AWS WorkSpaces and AppStream
• Containerised workloads
• AWS storage: S3, FSx, NetApp and EBS
• LogicMonitor
• Commvault
• Puppet
• PowerShell
• Terraform, ARM and CloudFormation
• GitHub Actions
• AI and emerging technology solutions

The successful candidate will help ensure these platforms are efficient, stable, secure, reliable and supportable, while continuously improving the developer and customer experience.

Key Responsibilities Platform Engineering & Cloud

• Provision, manage, scale and optimise infrastructure across AWS, Azure and GCP.
• Develop and continuously improve enterprise platform services.
• Design and implement infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code (IaC), including Terraform, ARM and CloudFormation.
• Develop configuration management and automation solutions using tools such as Puppet.
• Build reusable, scalable and resilient platform components.
• Contribute to the evolution of hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure.

Automation & Engineering

• Automate infrastructure and operational processes to reduce manual toil.
• Develop complex automation for Windows, Linux and SQL Server environments.
• Use PowerShell, Bash, Ruby, Python and T-SQL to develop engineering solutions.
• Work with APIs and integrate platform services and tooling.
• Codify infrastructure maintenance, monitoring, backup and operational processes.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions.
• Use modern AI-assisted development tools to accelerate scripting, automation and engineering activities.

Operating Systems & Infrastructure

• Administer, maintain and harden Windows Server, RHEL and Rocky Linux environments.
• Primarily manage operating systems through automation, while supporting legacy environments where manual administration may occasionally be required.
• Implement operating system management, patching and configuration solutions.
• Maintain platform components in accordance with security, reliability and lifecycle requirements.

Storage, Databases & End-User Computing

• Manage enterprise storage solutions, including AWS S3, FSx, NetApp and EBS.
• Support reliable and scalable SQL Server environments.
• Monitor capacity, performance and cost across storage and database platforms.
• Support and automate platform services underpinning virtual desktop infrastructure, including AWS WorkSpaces and AppStream.

Monitoring, Reliability & Resilience

• Implement and maintain robust monitoring and observability using tools such as LogicMonitor.
• Define and monitor appropriate service-level indicators and objectives (SLIs/SLOs).
• Manage enterprise backup and recovery capabilities using Commvault.
• Ensure platform services are reliable, supportable and resilient.
• Contribute to incident, problem and service management activities.
• Participate in emergency response and major incident management.

Operational Support

• Participate in an in-hours support rota, providing emergency response, engineering support for smaller requests, FinOps and SecOps activities.
• Participate in an out-of-hours support rota, providing support for P1 and major P2 incidents and exceptional changes.
• Work across multiple requests, incidents and continuous improvement activities simultaneously.
• Support service management, release management and lifecycle management processes.
• Help ensure platform components remain within supported technology lifecycles, targeting N-1 or better where appropriate.
• Apply appropriate release controls and blast-radius protection to minimise operational risk.

Stakeholder & Consultancy

• Provide technical consultancy to business and application teams.
• Work with application teams and non-technical stakeholders to define and understand non-functional requirements.
• Define non-functional requirements for platform services.
• Build strong, long-term relationships with application teams and other technology teams.
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Support external managed service providers and third parties with complex technical activities.
• Keep stakeholders informed using appropriate service, project management and communication tools.

Delivery & Documentation

• Produce high-quality technical documentation to support engineering activities.
• Participate in service transition and help ensure applications and platform components are successfully brought into production.
• Work within virtual, cross-functional squads where appropriate.
• Contribute to both agile and traditional delivery methodologies.
• Manage multiple delivery and improvement activities in parallel.
• Consider accessibility and inclusivity from the outset when designing and delivering technology solutions.

Security & Cost Management

• Make security a fundamental consideration in all engineering activities.
• Build and operate platforms in accordance with security and compliance requirements.
• Maintain a strong focus on reliability, supportability and operational resilience.
• Identify opportunities to reduce infrastructure and operational costs.
• Work with engineering, operations and financial stakeholders to identify and implement cost-saving opportunities.
• Apply FinOps principles when designing, operating and optimising cloud infrastructure.

You will ideally be:

• Product focused, using customer feedback and service measurement to inform continuous improvement.
• People focused, recognising that successful platforms depend on effective teams as much as technology.
• Customer focused, committed to delivering a high-quality service to teams that depend on enterprise platforms.
• A strong delivery professional with experience taking projects, platform improvements or product releases through to completion.
• Highly detail-oriented and comfortable working in fast-paced, technically complex environments.
• Curious and enthusiastic about learning new technologies.
• Passionate about cloud, automation and modern platform engineering practices.
• Comfortable working with advanced and complex technology environments.
• A confident communicator who can explain technical issues and make well-reasoned recommendations to stakeholders.
• Naturally curious, questioning and motivated by continuous improvement.
• Commercially aware and able to consider business context when making technical decisions.
• Proactive, autonomous and comfortable taking ownership.
• Highly collaborative and willing to share knowledge, ideas and approaches.
• Flexible when required to support critical projects and production services.
• Open and constructive when investigating incidents, solving problems and sharing knowledge.

Essential Experience & Technical Skills

• Strong professional experience in either Windows Server or Linux, with demonstrable depth of technical understanding.
• Strong experience with PowerShell automation.
• Experience working with APIs.
• Operational experience across at least two of:
  • Windows Server
  • Linux
  • SQL Server
• Experience working with AWS PaaS services.
• Experience with platform engineering practices including:
  • Infrastructure automation
  • Orchestration
  • Configuration management
  • Software configuration management
• Experience with a configuration management platform such as Puppet is highly desirable.
• Experience working with Infrastructure as Code, ideally Terraform.
• Experience working with CI/CD and Git-based development workflows.
• Experience engaging with a broad range of technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience translating between technical specialists and business stakeholders.
• Experience working within Scrum or Kanban-based agile environments, including associated tools and measurement.

Desirable Experience

• Experience working with Microsoft Azure.
• Experience working with Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Experience with LogicMonitor or similar enterprise monitoring platforms.
• Experience with Commvault or similar enterprise backup and recovery platforms.
• Experience implementing operating system management tooling for Windows and/or Linux.
• Experience working with containerised workloads.
• Experience with SQL Server automation and administration.
• Experience with cloud FinOps and cost optimisation.
• Experience working in hybrid cloud environments.

The position includes participation in an out-of-hours support rota, approximately one week in five, covering P1 and major P2 incidents and exceptional changes.