Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineer / SRE

Cavendish Professionals; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Cavendish Professionals seeks a hands-on Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineer / SRE to build, operate, and maintain high-performance production systems in a secure environment.

The role requires active UK DV clearance and is hybrid with 3 days on-site near London. 4+ years in SRE/DevOps, Docker/Kubernetes, and a CS/CE degree are preferred for this challenging, autonomous position.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional experience in Site Reliability Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, DevOps, or a similar engineering discipline.
• Demonstrable experience building and deploying production systems.
• Strong hands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes, ideally in production containerised environments.
• A degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering from a top-50 university.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, high-autonomy environment.
• Willingness to participate in an on-call rotation, approximately every 5–6 weeks.
• Active UK DV clearance is required.
• Ability to work from, or relocate within approximately 30 minutes of, the secure London site.

Responsibilities

• Build, operate, and maintain high-performance, scalable, and reliable services supporting the client’s platforms across UK government deployments.
• Take ownership of production infrastructure reliability, including monitoring, alerting, configuration management, upgrades, and capacity planning.
• Work closely with forward-deployed and product teams to design sensible, scalable systems and share responsibility for diagnosing, resolving, and preventing production issues.
• Deploy new client products across production environments and perform migrations to the latest infrastructure technologies.
• Lead automation initiatives that reduce manual operational work and improve reliability, developing innovative solutions using the client’s Foundry and Apollo platforms, including advanced LLM and AI technologies.
• Debug, improve, and optimise services and infrastructure with a focus on long-term reliability, performance, and scalability.
• Identify recurring operational problems and develop automated, sustainable solutions rather than relying on manual intervention.
• Contribute to architecture and systems-design decisions, balancing reliability, scalability, security, and operational simplicity.
• Participate in an on-call rotation approximately every 5–6 weeks, providing technical troubleshooting and incident response support for production systems.

Skills

SRE experience

Docker

Kubernetes

On-call rotation

UK DV clearance

High autonomy

Education

CS/CE degree (top-50 university)

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

Job description

We are looking for a hands-on Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineer / Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) to join a team responsible for building, operating, and maintaining high-performance, scalable, and reliable production systems in a secure environment.

This is an engineering-focused role for someone who enjoys solving complex infrastructure problems, automating manual processes, and taking ownership of system reliability from design through production.

The role supports UK government deployments and critical security missions, so candidates must hold active UK Developed Vetting (DV) clearance.

Candidates must currently live, or be willing to relocate, within approximately 30 minutes of the client’s secure London site.

• Type: Permanent, full-time
• Visa: No sponsorship
• Hybrid with 3 days per week on-site
• The candidate should have sole British nationality, candidates can not hold dual nationality.
• The candidate needs to have an active UK DV security clearance.

Key Requirements

• 4+ years of professional experience in Site Reliability Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, DevOps, or a similar engineering discipline.
• Demonstrable experience building and deploying production systems. This is an engineering role, so experience limited to production support, monitoring, or troubleshooting is not sufficient.
• Strong hands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes, ideally in production containerised environments.
• A degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering from a top-50 university.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, high-autonomy environment.
• Willingness to participate in an on-call rotation, approximately every 5–6 weeks.
• Active UK DV clearance is required.
• Ability to work from, or relocate within approximately 30 minutes of, the secure London site.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Terraform, Ansible, or other Infrastructure-as-Code tools.
• Experience designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience working with distributed systems and large-scale production environments.
• Previous experience in defence, security, government, or other highly regulated environments.

What You'll Do

• Build, operate, and maintain high-performance, scalable, and reliable services supporting the client’s platforms across UK government deployments.
• Take ownership of production infrastructure reliability, including monitoring, alerting, configuration management, upgrades, and capacity planning.
• Work closely with forward-deployed and product teams to design sensible, scalable systems and share responsibility for diagnosing, resolving, and preventing production issues.
• Deploy new client products across production environments and perform migrations to the latest infrastructure technologies.
• Lead automation initiatives that reduce manual operational work and improve reliability, developing innovative solutions using the client’s Foundry and Apollo platforms, including advanced LLM and AI technologies.
• Debug, improve, and optimise services and infrastructure with a focus on long-term reliability, performance, and scalability.
• Identify recurring operational problems and develop automated, sustainable solutions rather than relying on manual intervention.
• Contribute to architecture and systems-design decisions, balancing reliability, scalability, security, and operational simplicity.
• Participate in an on-call rotation approximately every 5–6 weeks, providing technical troubleshooting and incident response support for production systems.

Why This Role Stands Out

High-Impact Security Work

You’ll build and operate infrastructure that directly supports some of the UK government’s most critical missions. Your work will have tangible, real-world impact every day.

Fast-Paced Engineering Environment

The client operates with the speed and autonomy of a technology company while tackling problems at government scale. If you’re frustrated by the pace and bureaucracy of traditional defence environments, this role offers greater ownership, faster iteration, and meaningful technical autonomy.

Ownership from Day One

You won’t simply maintain someone else’s systems. You’ll take ownership of reliability and operations for critical production environments, contribute to architecture decisions, and drive automation initiatives with a high degree of independence.

Cutting-Edge Technology

You’ll work with modern infrastructure and distributed-systems technologies including Kubernetes, containerised environments, LLM/AI tooling, and the client’s own Foundry and Apollo platforms.

The team prioritises using the right tools for the job rather than relying on legacy technology, giving engineers the opportunity to solve challenging problems with a modern technology stack.