Lead GCP Engineer

GCP ENGINEER – UK/EU

Job Description

Role: GCP Engineering Lead

Location: UK / EU (Hybrid, 1-3 days a month in London

Date: 19 August 2026

Classification: Internal — role specification

SoftPapaya is a trading name of

PS Technology Sp Z o. o a LLC company registered in Poland, registration number (NIP): 8943282594 Role Overview

An experienced, hands-on GCP Engineering Lead is sought to strengthen and mature the

organisation's Analytics platform, accelerate delivery of critical Finance and Actuarial capabilities,

establish robust cloud engineering practices, and provide technical leadership to a growing analytics

engineering team operating within a highly regulated environment.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Platform Ownership

• Provide technical leadership for the organisation's strategic data and analytics products.

• Define and drive the technical roadmap for the GCP Analytics platform from concept

through to implementation.

• Take ownership of engineering standards, architecture, resilience, security and platform

scalability.

• Review and improve existing engineering practices, deployment processes, automation

frameworks and engineering tooling.

• Guide technical decision-making and influence platform direction across the product

lifecycle.

• Remain hands-on in the delivery of complex engineering work rather than operating solely in

an architectural or management capacity.

• Lead solution design activities, code reviews and technical assurance across the platform.

Cloud Architecture & Engineering

• Design, implement and operate secure, scalable, cloud-native solutions within Google Cloud

Platform.

• Deliver production-grade solutions that are resilient, supportable and operationally mature.

• Ensure cloud environments are designed to support large-scale enterprise workloads and

future growth.

• Drive technical improvements that increase platform reliability, performance,

maintainability and operational readiness.

• Support the deployment of analytical solutions within the organisation's cloud environment

while adhering to enterprise security controls and governance requirements.

DevOps, Automation & Platform Engineering

• Champion modern engineering and DevOps practices across the platform.

• Drive adoption and maturity of CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code and automated

deployment processes.

www.softpayapa.com• Implement and improve platform observability, monitoring, alerting and operational support

capabilities.

• Develop and maintain reusable automation patterns and engineering standards.

• Leverage Terraform and Infrastructure as Code principles to ensure repeatable, secure and

scalable environments.

• Continuously assess and improve engineering efficiency through automation and

standardisation.

Security, Governance & Compliance

• Embed security-by-design principles within all platform components and services.

• Ensure solutions align with organisational governance standards, security policies and

regulatory obligations.

• Balance innovation and rapid delivery with appropriate risk management and control

frameworks.

• Design secure data integration patterns incorporating authentication, authorisation and

access management technologies.

• Support delivery of solutions that are suitable for audit scrutiny and regulatory reporting

requirements.

• Operate effectively within highly governed and regulated environments.

Data & Analytics Platform Support

• Support and enhance the GCP Analytics product which provides self-service analytical

environments to business users.

• Contribute to platform capabilities supporting Finance and Actuarial reporting and analysis.

• Ensure the platform enables secure, governed use of analytics and data services.

• Support data integration capabilities across APIs, databases, data pipelines and cloud

services.

• Help deliver critical year-end processing and reporting workloads.

• Contribute technical expertise across technologies including GCP, BigQuery, Python, Power

BI and associated analytics tooling.

Team Leadership & Collaboration

Engineering Leadership

• Provide technical mentorship and coaching to engineering team members.

• Help develop engineering capability, engineering discipline and technical maturity across the

team.

www.softpayapa.com• Foster a culture of engineering excellence, continuous improvement and knowledge sharing.

• Lead by example through active participation in platform delivery and engineering activities.

• Support a small engineering team and help uplift capability through practical leadership and

coaching.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Collaborate with product teams, architects and senior stakeholders to ensure technology

investments deliver business value.

• Work with Finance and Actuarial stakeholders to understand requirements and translate

business needs into technical solutions.

• Participate in demonstrations, show-and-tell sessions and technical reviews.

• Communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Influence technical direction through credible and pragmatic technical leadership.

Essential Experience & Skills

Google Cloud Platform

• Strong hands-on expertise in Google Cloud Platform.

• Extensive experience designing, implementing and operating cloud-based technology

products.

• Proven track record delivering enterprise-scale cloud solutions.

• Experience supporting mission-critical production environments.

DevOps & Infrastructure Engineering

• Deep DevOps and platform engineering experience.

• Advanced Terraform and Infrastructure as Code expertise.

• Strong experience with CI/CD tooling and deployment automation.

• Experience building and operating resilient cloud platforms.

• Strong understanding of observability, monitoring, incident management and operational

excellence.

Data Engineering & Integration

• Experience designing secure data integration solutions.

• Knowledge of APIs, databases, data pipelines and cloud-based data services.

• Strong understanding of authentication and access management technologies including

OAuth and OIDC.

www.softpayapa.com• Experience working with analytical platforms and data-intensive workloads.

• Working knowledge of SQL and Python.

• Exposure to tools such as FiveTran, Airbyte or similar modern data integration technologies

would be advantageous.

Security & Governance

• Demonstrable experience designing secure and compliant cloud solutions.

• Strong understanding of governance, risk and compliance requirements.

• Ability to operate effectively within regulated environments.

• Experience building solutions that withstand audit and regulatory scrutiny.

Team & Technology Environment

The role sits within the engineering team supporting the organisation's GCP Analytics platform.

Current technologies include:

• Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

• Terraform

• Python

• SQL

• BigQuery

• Power BI

• CI/CD and DevOps tooling

• Modern cloud-native data integration technologies

The platform provides secure, self-service analytics environments that enable business users to

develop and manage analytical workloads while operating within the organisation's governance and

security frameworks.

Personal Attributes

The successful candidate will demonstrate:

• Strong technical leadership and engineering credibility.

• A hands-on, delivery-focused approach.

• Pragmatism and the ability to balance pace with quality and governance.

• The confidence to work independently and make sound technical decisions.

• Strong collaboration and communication skills.

www.softpayapa.com• The ability to influence and mentor others through expertise and example.

• A commitment to engineering excellence, continuous improvement and knowledge sharing.

• A mindset focused on building secure, resilient, business-critical solutions suitable for

regulated and audited environments.

Summary

An experienced, hands-on GCP Engineering Lead who can strengthen and mature the organisation's

Analytics platform, accelerate delivery of critical Finance and Actuarial capabilities, establish robust

cloud engineering practices and provide technical leadership to a growing analytics engineering

team operating within a highly regulated environment.

www.softpayapa.com