Platform Engineer

Principal Platform Engineer (AWS)

£120,000 – £140,000 + benefits

Remote-first (UK) with occasional client-site travel

We're hiring for a brand-new Principal Platform Engineer role for one of our long standing clients and looking for a cool person who wants to shape, not just deliver , cloud platforms at scale.

The company design and build some of the most secure AWS environments in the UK, supporting national security, defence, and highly regulated public sector organisations .

This is a 60% hands-on / 40% hands-off role, ideal for a senior engineer who still loves being close to the tech, but also thrives on architecture ownership, stakeholder influence, and team leadership .

You’ll play a pivotal role in defining AWS platform strategy, leading delivery across complex programmes, and acting as a trusted technical voice for both clients and internal teams. If you’ve worked with AWS Landing Zones at scale , this is where you’ll do your best work. (but that's not essential)

What you’ll be doing

• Own and evolve AWS platform architecture across complex, multi-account, highly secure environments
• Design, implement and optimise AWS Landing Zones ,
• Act as a technical leader and escalation point across multiple projects and client engagements
• Balance hands-on engineering with technical leadership , design authority and stakeholder management
• Build and maintain Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, CloudFormation and AWS CDK
• Embed security-by-design , integrating services such as IAM, KMS, GuardDuty, Security Hub and Inspector
• Design CI/CD pipelines enabling self-service, repeatable and auditable deployments
• Partner closely with AWS, internal delivery teams, and senior client stakeholders
• Mentor and lead engineers , raising the bar for engineering quality, documentation and best practice

Skills:

Essential

• Significant hands-on experience designing and running AWS platforms at scale
• Strong background in secure cloud architecture for regulated environments
• Proven experience balancing technical delivery with leadership and stakeholder management
• Infrastructure as Code expertise (Terraform / CloudFormation / CDK)
• Strong understanding of AWS networking, IAM, encryption and security patterns
• Eligibility for SC clearance

Nice to have

• AWS Landing Zone accelerator or framework experience
• Kubernetes / EKS and container platforms
• Observability tooling (Grafana, Prometheus, ELK, OpenTelemetry)
• Python, Go or similar for automation
• Experience working directly with AWS on architecture or delivery

The nitty and gritty:

• £120,000 – £140,000 salary depending on experience
• Remote-first working , with meaningful but limited client travel
• Opportunity to shape a new role with real autonomy and influence
• Work on nationally critical, genuinely interesting projects
• Collaborate with senior engineers, AWS specialists and industry leaders
• 25 days holiday + bank holidays
• Up to 5% employer pension contribution