Platform Engineer 6 month FTC

Platform Engineer – 6 month fixed term contract

We offer remote working. If preferred, we can also do a hybrid approach with our offices based in Manchester, Stoke, Peterborough, Sunderland, Chesterfield and Tunbridge Wells.

Role Purpose

The Platform Engineer will support the delivery of the group’s vision for developer self-service, containerisation, golden templates and automation. Utilising technologies such as internal developer platforms (Backstage), Kubernetes (AKS, NKP etc.), Ci/CD (Azure Devops pipelines, GitLab, octopus etc.), GitOps (ArgoCD), Infrastructure as code (Terraform) within both on prem and public cloud providers.

Key Accountabilities & Responsibilities

Cloud Platforms

Proficiency with major cloud providers primarily Azure

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Cloud services (e.g., AKS, Azure Functions, GKE)

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Tools like Terraform

Configuration management (Ansible, Chef, Puppet)

Containerization & Orchestration

Docker and container life cycle management

Kubernetes (K8s) architecture and operations

Helm charts, Kustomize

Security & Compliance

Identity and Access Management (IAM) ( eg Microsoft Entra / Azure AD)

Secrets management (Key Vault, AWS Secrets Manager)

Secure code life cycle (Sonarcloud, Checkmarx)

DevOps & Automation Skills

CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Octopus)

Proficiency with Git version control

GitOps (ArgoCD) practices and CI/CD integration

Monitoring and observability (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Datadog)

Scripting (PowerShell, Bash, Python)

Event-driven automation (e.g., using serverless functions)

Architecture & Design Thinking

Designing scalable, resilient, and cost-effective platforms

Microservices and distributed systems understanding

API gateways, service discovery, and load balancing

Soft Skills & Collaboration

Cross-functional collaboration with architecture, developers, security, and infrastructure

Agile and DevOps culture familiarity

Strong documentation and communication skills

Incident response and postmortem analysis

Skills, Experience & Knowledge

Demonstrated experience in systems engineering and cloud platforms, with a track record of successfully managing and optimizing complex infrastructure.

In-depth knowledge of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools and containerization technologies, including Terraform, Docker, and Kubernetes.

Strong background in implementing and managing security measures and compliance frameworks, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of data.

Proficiency in DevOps methodologies, including CI/CD pipeline creation and maintenance, automation, and monitoring, git versioning.

Experience with enterprise load balancers and/or Web application firewalls.

Understanding of the TCP/IP stack, and TCP/IP troubleshooting.

Basic IP routing and subnetting knowledge.

Good knowledge of REST API, API authentication

Experience packaging/building source code, (eg .NET, Python or Java)

Solid understanding of architecture and design principles, with the ability to create scalable, resilient, and cost-effective solutions.

Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams and document technical processes clearly.

Demonstrated experience in gathering initial requirements from third-party teams or internal stakeholders and translating them into actionable plans to guide their own work.

Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities, with a proactive approach to identifying and resolving issues.

Desirable

Networking components

Experience with any of the following, NetScaler Apigee, Cloudflare, Akamai, Kubernetes networking

Experience with edge computing or hybrid cloud

Familiarity with FinOps or cloud cost optimization

AI/ML infrastructure support (e.g., MLOps pipelines)