Cloud Engineer

Silicon Logic UK Ltd.; Sheffield; Hybrid; GBP 93,000 - 121,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Job summary

Silicon Logic UK Ltd. in Sheffield seeks a Private Cloud Principal Engineer to lead hands-on technical delivery across a private cloud platform. You’ll shape virtualization, container and Kubernetes capabilities and enable secure, scalable services.

Reporting to the Head of Private Cloud, you’ll collaborate with Product Owners, architects and engineering teams to turn strategy into practical, well-engineered outcomes while upholding security, reliability, and cost‑efficiency.

Qualifications

• Proven experience as a Principal/Lead Engineer in large-scale enterprise environments.
• Strong background in private cloud/platform engineering with virtualization and containers.
• Expertise in Kubernetes cluster operations and multi-tenant design.
• Automation mindset with Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD practices.

Responsibilities

• Provide hands-on technical leadership across the private cloud platform.
• Define standards, reference architectures and guardrails.
• Lead end-to-end design of compute, storage, networking and orchestration.
• Drive platform reliability, scalability and operability across environments.
• Collaborate with product owners, architects and engineering teams.

Skills

Principal Engineer experience

Private cloud engineering

Kubernetes

Containers

Automation / IaC

CI/CD

Security controls

Production readiness

Tools

VMware

Kubernetes

Kafka

Job description

Role/Job title: Private Cloud Principal Engineer

Work Location: Sheffield

Role type/Duration: 12 Months contract

Mode of working: Hybrid (3 days)

Day rate: GBP 580 /day (Inside IR35)

The Role

As a Principal Engineer in Private Cloud, you’ll provide hands‑on technical leadership across HSBC’s private cloud platform, shaping and improving our virtualisation, container and Kubernetes capabilities, and enabling resilient, secure, high-performing services (including Kafka‑based event streaming and microservices platforms). Reporting to the Head of Private Cloud, you’ll partner closely with Product Owners, architects and engineering teams across CTO to turn strategy into practical, well‑engineered outcomes.

Your responsibilities:

• Technical leadership & engineering excellence
• Set engineering direction for private cloud capabilities spanning virtualisation, containers, Kubernetes, Kafka/event streaming, and microservices enablement.
• Act as a senior technical authority, review designs, challenge assumptions, and ensure solutions are supportable, secure, and cost-effective.
• Define and promote engineering standards, reference architectures, patterns and guardrails (think: "paved roads", not "speed bumps").
• Lead the end‑to‑end design and evolution of private cloud platform components (compute, storage, networking, orchestration, platform services).
• Drive consistent platform capabilities across environments (dev/test/prod), improving reliability, scalability, performance and operability.
• Influence platform roadmaps with Product Owners; translate business and technology needs into actionable engineering plans.
• Own key decisions around Kubernetes platform design: cluster architecture, multi‑tenancy, ingress, service mesh (where applicable), policy, secrets, observability, upgrade strategies, and workload onboarding.
• Establish repeatable deployment patterns using GitOps/CI/CD, configuration management, and automation‑first approaches.
• Kafka & event‑driven platforms
• Provide technical leadership on Kafka platform usage and enablement (topic design patterns, partitioning strategy, resiliency, schema governance, security, monitoring and capacity planning).
• Partner with architects and service teams to adopt event‑driven patterns safely and consistently.
• Coach teams on microservices design, domain boundaries, API/event contracts, resiliency patterns, and operational readiness.
• Improve developer experience through templates, golden paths, self‑service capabilities, and clear documentation.
• Embed security‑by‑design and operational excellence: hardening, vulnerability management, identity and access controls, data protection, and auditability.
• Work as a bridge between Product, Architecture and Engineering—getting alignment without boiling the ocean.
• Communicate complex technical topics clearly to mixed audiences; write crisp design docs and influence decision forums.

Your Profile

Essential skills/knowledge/experience:

• Reports to: Head of Private Cloud
• Works closely with: Product Owners, CTO Architects, Platform/Infrastructure Engineering, Application Engineering teams, Cyber Security, Operations/SRE, and relevant governance forums.
• Proven experience as a Principal Engineer / Lead Engineer / Senior Staff Engineer (or equivalent) in large-scale, regulated, enterprise environments.
• Strong background in private cloud / platform engineering, including solid depth in at least two of: Virtualisation technologies (e.g., VMware or equivalent), Containers & Kubernetes (cluster operations, upgrades, networking, multi‑tenancy, policy), Kafka/event streaming platforms (architecture, operations, governance)
• Strong engineering fundamentals: distributed systems, networking concepts, performance tuning, fault tolerance and capacity planning.
• Automation mindset with experience in Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD practices (tooling can vary).
• Strong operational and risk awareness: security controls, change management, and production readiness practices.

Desirable skills/knowledge/experience: (As applicable)

• Service mesh, API gateways, secrets management, policy-as-code.
• Observability platforms (metrics/logs/traces) and practical incident leadership.
• Experience building “platform as a product” capabilities (service catalogue, self‑service, developer portals).
• Experience with multi-region / active-active design considerations and resilience testing.

Leadership behaviours:

• We Value Difference: welcomes challenge, encourages diverse views, and makes space for quieter voices in technical discussions.
• We Succeed Together: builds strong partnerships across Product, Architecture and Engineering to deliver shared outcomes.
• We Take Responsibility: makes clear trade‑offs, owns decisions, and reduces operational and security risk proactively.
• We Get It Done: drives pragmatic outcomes, removes blockers, and raises engineering quality while moving at pace.