System Engineer

Senior/Lead Systems Engineer – Contract

📍 Manchester (2-3 days/week onsite) | £500/day, Outside IR35 | 5-month contract

We're looking for a hands-on Senior/Lead Engineer to take ownership of the corporate compute and platform estate for a business undergoing significant technical change: servers, virtualisation, storage, domain infrastructure and cloud workloads all sit under this role.

This is a genuine full-stack systems position for someone who's comfortable owning infrastructure end-to-end and working independently in a fast-moving, low-maturity environment.

What you'll need:

• Expert-level systems engineering across Windows Server, virtualisation, storage, AD/domain architecture and the M365 stack
• Hands-on cloud experience with GCP, Azure or AWS, plus infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or Bicep)
• Solid networking fundamentals (CCNA-level): VLANs, static routing, core principles
• A true full-stack grounding spanning identity, cloud and endpoint, with the appetite to learn fast
• Strong scripting/automation skills in PowerShell and Python
• Proven discipline around backup, DR and patch management
• Confidence operating independently where process is still maturing

Nice to have:

• Background in games, VFX, animation or another technical creative studio environment
• Exposure to Perforce or large-scale build-pipeline infrastructure
• High-availability and resilience design experience
• Comfortable using AI tooling to support infrastructure-as-code work
• If you're a systems generalist who enjoys building structure into a high-change environment and wants the autonomy of an outside-IR35 contract, get in touch.