Forward Deployed Engineer - Infrastructure

Whereby; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension plan (match up to 5%)

Life insurance

Maternity/Paternity leave

Extra holiday

Flexible working hours

Cycle-to-work

Electric car scheme

Season ticket loan

Learning materials & courses

Sports & hobby clubs

All latest tech

Fresh fruit & cereals

Snacks & drinks

Job summary

Thought Machine is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to directly interface with client engineering teams and implement production-ready Vault deployments. You will embed with client teams to design, build, and deliver cloud-native Vault solutions across client and Thought Machine hosted infrastructure, from presales to production at scale.

You will enable clients to deploy high-availability cloud infrastructure, assist with optimisation, and troubleshoot in hybrid environments while

Qualifications

• Able to explain technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Hands-on experience with Linux/Unix administration and clustering technologies.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP) and container orchestration (Kubernetes).
• Familiarity with automation/configuration tools (Terraform, Puppet, Chef, Ansible).
• Knowledge of data stores such as PostgreSQL and messaging with Kafka.

Responsibilities

• Act as the technical interface with clients during deployments and presales to implement Vault-based solutions.
• Design and deploy cloud infrastructure end-to-end with high availability and security.
• Collaborate with internal SRE teams to optimize cloud deployments and troubleshoot issues.
• Travel to client sites up to 25% of the time and work both on-site and remotely as needed.
• Support and mentor clients through production deployments and post-implementation support.

Skills

Linux/Unix

Kafka

PostgreSQL

Kubernetes

Istio

Terraform/Puppet/Chef/Ansible

AWS/GCP

Tools

HashiCorp Vault

Job description

Thought Machine's mission is bold – to properly and permanently rid the world's banks of legacy technology. To achieve this, we have developed the foundations of modern banking through core and payments technology which run natively in the cloud. What we are attempting is hard and means we need great people working together to build great technology.

We have grown rapidly in the past few years – growing our team to more than 550 individuals across offices in London, New York, Singapore, Sydney and our newly established Engineering Hub in Lisbon. We have raised more than £500m in funding and our investors include Molten Ventures, Eurazeo, Intesa Sanpaolo, Temasek, Nyca Partners, JPMorgan Chase Strategic Investments, Standard Chartered Ventures, and more.

We have created a culture that enables our team to produce the best work in the industry while ensuring we have fun along the way. We're regularly cited as having a fantastic workplace culture and have been recognised by Sifted magazine as having one of the highest Glassdoor ratings for a UK fintech company and the industry's most generous employee share package. Named one of the world's most innovative fintechs by Global Finance Magazine, we were also recognised by the Financial Times as one of Europe's fastest-growing companies for two consecutive years—and a UK Best Employer for 2026.

The Forward Deployed Engineer is Thought Machine's primary technical interface with the client as an extension to the product. FDEs embed directly with the client’s engineering teams to design, build, and deliver production-ready implementations of Vault and associated products.

You will be responsible for enabling and supporting our clients to deliver a best in class cloud native implementation of Thought Machine Vault products on client or Thought Machine hosted infrastructure, from presales to production at scale. You will be expected to work on Vault deployments end-to-end, from engineering at the business logic to supporting clients in their cloud infrastructure preparation, deployment, optimisation and troubleshooting.

For this role, we are looking for candidates with tangible infrastructure experience to work with clients on their infrastructure deployments and to act as an extension of our internal SRE teams.

FDEs operate across the full project lifecycle ensuring requirements are implemented, tested and work to improve the product based on client feedback. You will be expected to travel to client sites (up to 25% of your time), work autonomously in complex environments, and act as the connective tissue between Thought Machine's product engineering and the client's delivery teams.

Duties

• Hands on cloud infrastructure consulting both on client site and remote

• Working with customers and external partners to design and prepare suitable cloud infrastructure to ensure Thought Machine Vault products can be tested and run successfully at scale. Includes planning for high availability, disaster recovery, backup, redundancy, capacity and security.

• Deploying and configuring Thought Machine Vault products on client, SaaS and internal cloud infrastructure

• Developing deep understanding of and advising clients on optimisation of cloud infrastructure for overarching implementation of Vault, including advising on systems outside of Vault to empower holistic digital transformation in collaboration with Thought Machine Client Architects

• Supporting and troubleshooting client, SaaS and internal cloud infrastructure both remotely and on site, including by promoting and deploying suitable monitoring, logging and alerting tools

• Working closely with internal product and engineering teams to ensure client feedback is incorporated into improvements to the product and platform

• Supporting the Thought Machine Commercial Team and Cloud Provider Partners in answering infrastructure queries and challenges in the presales cycle

Requirements

Essential

• Ability to explain technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Hands on experience of some or all of the following:

  • Linux/Unix administration, e.g. Ubuntu, Debian

  • Kafka

  • PostgreSQL

  • Kubernetes

  • Istio

• Experience with automation/configuration management, e.g. Terraform, Puppet, Chef, Ansible

• Experience with AWS or GCP

Desirable

• Experience with at least two and associated certifications for at least one of the following:

  • AWS (ideally certified Solutions Architect Professional)

  • GCP (ideally certified Professional Cloud Architect)

  • Azure (ideally certified Solutions Architect Expert)

• Experience of enterprise secrets management systems, e.g. HashiCorp Vault, AWS secrets manager

• Experience in supporting production systems for high profile, mission critical systems, ideally for a tier 1 financial institution.

• Experience with hybrid cloud technologies including OpenShift, Google Anthos, AWS EKS Anywhere, AWS Outposts

• A strong background in Go, Python or Java

• Experience with CockroachDB, AlloyDB, Aurora

• Experience with observability tools, e.g. Prometheus, Grafana

Benefits

• Highly competitive salary

• Pension plan (match up to 5%)

• Life insurance - three times annual salary

• Competitive maternity (six months fully paid) and paternity leave (four weeks fully paid)

• Shared parental leave (matched to our maternity leave for the same point in time)

• 25 days holiday and bank holidays

• Flexible working hours

• Cycle-to-work scheme

• Electric car scheme

• Season ticket loan

• Access to outstanding learning materials and courses

• Sports and hobby clubs, subsidised by Thought Machine

• All the latest tech you need

• Start the day properly with fresh fruit and cereals

• Huge range of healthy (and not-so-healthy) snacks, smoothies and drinks

• A talented and experienced team as your colleagues

• An environment where we encourage learning and progress

• Two charity days a year

• Weekly food pop-up

We actively hire candidates who demonstrate technical excellence in their field and welcome people of all ages and backgrounds, providing everyone with equal access to professional development. You are encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't accurately match the job description. We also encourage applications from those with different abilities, including candidates with ADHD, autism, dyslexia or dyspraxia.