Platform Engineer

Platform Engineer - Inside IR35 Contract: Initial engagement until January (extension likely) Rate:£400-425 per day (Inside IR35) Working Pattern: Hybrid (details to be confirmed)

We are seeking experienced Platform Engineers to join a critical programme of work in a central government department, focused on building and evolving modern internal platform capabilities that enable developers to deliver software quickly, securely and reliably.

This role is centred on GitLab, Kubernetes and platform engineering, with a strong emphasis on developer enablement, CI/CD engineering and reusable platform tooling rather than cloud infrastructure. The successful candidate will help design and operate scalable platform services, improve developer experience, and create reusable automation that supports multiple engineering teams. Key Responsibilities

Design, build and operate scalable, resilient platform infrastructure supporting cloud-native application delivery.

Develop, maintain and optimise GitLab CI/CD pipelines, improving build, test and deployment workflows.

Build reusable GitLab CI/CD Components that can be consumed across multiple engineering teams.

Deploy, manage and troubleshoot Kubernetes workloads and clusters.

Develop automation using Infrastructure as Code and DevOps best practices.

Write robust, modular Bash scripts with reusable functions to automate operational tasks.

Contribute unit and integration tests across platform tooling and automation.

Improve developer experience through platform enhancements, self-service capabilities and engineering enablement.

Support and evolve Internal Developer Portals (such as Backstage) or similar developer self-service tooling.

Collaborate closely with software engineers to improve platform reliability, consistency and usability.

Essential Skills & Experience

Excellent hands-on experience designing, implementing and optimising GitLab CI/CD pipelines.

Recent experience building and supporting reusable GitLab CI/CD Components for multiple teams.

Experience with Internal Developer Portals (e.g. Backstage) or developer self-service platforms.

Experience working to GDS and Government standards