Platform Engineer

Lead AWS Platform Engineer - Must be comfortable with mentoring/management responsibilities

Hybrid - Leeds city centre (free parking)

1 day per week post probation, 2 days per week initially.

Role Summary

The Lead Platform Engineer will provide strategic technical leadership for the cloud-native initiatives. You will establish architectural standards and operational practices to enable scalable SaaS delivery, driving developer experience through self-service platforms, GitOps workflows, and robust observability.

You will lead and mentor a team of engineers, balancing strategic planning with hands-on execution to ensure high reliability and security in data-sensitive environments.

Main Responsibilities

Leadership & Strategy

• Define and drive the vision, strategy, and roadmap for platform engineering.
• Mentor technical talent and foster a culture of innovation and collaboration.
• Manage team capacity, balancing new features with technical debt and operational excellence.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to drive organizational adoption of platform initiatives.

Technical Execution

• Architect self-service capabilities (e.g., Backstage) and GitOps workflows (e.g., ArgoCD).
• Own production SaaS reliability, managing multi-cluster Kubernetes environments and AWS infrastructure.
• Implement DORA and Core 4 metrics to drive continuous improvement.
• Establish standards for CI/CD, containerization, and security (RBAC, disaster recovery).
• Maintain the observability stack (Prometheus, Grafana) and define SLIs/SLOs.

Collaboration & Improvement

• Partner with Security and Product teams to ensure compliance and meet customer needs.
• Eliminate toil through automation and optimize infrastructure costs.
• Lead the platform "Community of Practice" and document key architectural decisions.

Skills and Knowledge

Essential

• Experience: 5+ years designing cloud infrastructure and owning production SaaS platforms.
• Orchestration: Expert-level Kubernetes (multi-cluster management and resource optimization).
• Deployment: Hands-on GitOps experience using ArgoCD and Helm.
• Tooling: Proficiency in IaC ($Terraform$, $CDK$, or $Ansible$) and observability platforms.
• Security: Understanding of security standards in high-value data environments.
• Soft Skills: Strong stakeholder management and ability to influence across teams.

Desired

• AWS or Kubernetes certifications.
• Experience implementing DORA/Core 4 metrics.
• TypeScript/React skills for portal customization.

Key Benefits

• Competitive Package
• Work-Life Balance: 34 days holiday (plus bank holidays).
• Perks: Generous pension, healthcare cashback, and more.