Director of Platform Engineering

Primis; United Kingdom; Remote; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus 10%

Fully remote

Home office budget

Employer pension 5%

45 days holiday + bank holidays

Certifications budget £5,000

Job summary

Primis in the United Kingdom seeks an experienced Director of Platform Engineering to lead the internal platform team. You’ll set technical direction, own architecture decisions and stay hands‑on to establish high standards across IaC, observability, and cloud‑native services.

You’ll hire and mentor engineers, align priorities with cross‑functional leaders, and drive realistic delivery plans. The role emphasizes automation, AI-assisted engineering and production reliability, while managing

Qualifications

• Solid background in Network Engineering.
• Proven experience leading a multi‑discipline team (IE systems, network, reliability).
• Can write and review IaC (Terraform or Ansible).
• Strong understanding of core platform fundamentals: IaC, secrets management, service discovery, identity and access, observability and public cloud.
• Experience owning production services in regulated environments (PCI would be beneficial).
• Assisted AI Engineering experience with Claude or similar for reviewing and refactoring code, IaC and automation.
• MCP understanding around how agents reach tools and data through MCP.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction and turn recurring needs into reusable platform capabilities.
• Own architecture and key design decisions across cost, performance and reliability.
• Stay hands‑on, setting standards and reviewing code, infrastructure and designs.
• Prioritise the roadmap and deliver well‑documented, observable self‑service capabilities.
• Hire, develop and retain engineers through clear expectations and regular feedback.
• Agree priorities with cross‑functional leaders and create realistic delivery plans.
• Run delivery openly, tracking outcomes, service levels and performance.
• Drive automation and responsible AI‑assisted engineering across the team.
• Own production reliability, on‑call, incident response and continuous improvement.
• Manage stakeholders, suppliers, budgets and risks, escalating issues early.

Skills

Network engineering

Team leadership

IaC

Terraform/Ansible

Public cloud

Observability

PCI/regulatory experience

AI-assisted engineering

MCP

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

Prometheus

Job description

We’re looking for an experienced and competent Director of Platform Engineering who will assist with the department’s internal platform. This will be building a network platform rather than traditional network operations. This role will require you to have a background in Network, Automation, Infrastructure as Code and APIs.

The role will involve leading a platform team as its technical authority. The platform team will be building internal platforms that the engineers build and run on.

What you’ll be doing

• Set technical direction and turn recurring needs into reusable platform capabilities.
• Own architecture and key design decisions across cost, performance and reliability.
• Stay hands‑on, setting standards and reviewing code, infrastructure and designs.
• Prioritise the roadmap and deliver well‑documented, observable self‑service capabilities.
• Hire, develop and retain engineers through clear expectations and regular feedback.
• Agree priorities with cross‑functional leaders and create realistic delivery plans.
• Run delivery openly, tracking outcomes, service levels and performance.
• Drive automation and responsible AI‑assisted engineering across the team.
• Own production reliability, on‑call, incident response and continuous improvement.
• Manage stakeholders, suppliers, budgets and risks, escalating issues early.

Core Skills

• Solid background in Network Engineering
• Experience of leading a multi‑disciplined team (IE systems, network, reliability)
• Can write and review IaC
• Strong understanding of core platform fundamentals: IaC (Terraform or Ansible) secrets management, service discovery, identity and access, observability and public cloud
• Experience owning production services in regulated environments (PCI would be beneficial)
• Assisted AI Engineering experience with Claude or similar for reviewing and refactoring code, IaC and automation
• MCP understanding around how agents reach tools and data through MCP

Package

• 10% annual bonus
• Fully remote working
• Home office set up budget
• 5% Employer pension
• 45 Days Holiday + Bank Holidays
• Up to £5000 for certifications and training per year