Head of Platform Engineering

Hyperoptic; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Global Remote working — up to 2 weeks/

25 days holiday

Private medical Insurance

Life assurance 4x salary

Pension with 4% match

Retail offers

Free Hyperoptic broadband

Enhanced pay for new parents

Job summary

Hyperoptic is seeking a seasoned Head of Platform Engineering to lead a ~20-person team and shape a scalable, secure, reliable platform. You will drive DevOps practices, cloud strategy across AWS/GCP, and developer tooling to accelerate product delivery.

You will mentor engineers, evolve IaC with Terraform/Ansible, and advance Kubernetes adoption while collaborating with cross-functional teams.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading Platform Engineering, DevOps, or Cloud Engineering teams.
• Experience managing large internal and external engineering resources.
• Strong knowledge of AWS and/or GCP cloud-native architecture.
• Extensive hands-on experience with Kubernetes and containerised environments.
• Deep expertise in Terraform and Ansible for IaC.
• Experience designing event-driven architectures using Kafka.
• Strong CI/CD, automation and modern DevOps practices.
• Experience building internal platforms and developer tooling.
• Strong reliability, observability, security and scalability awareness.
• Ability to use engineering metrics to drive improvements.
• Excellent communication to influence stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the Platform Engineering team.
• Foster collaborative, inclusive, high-performing culture.
• Manage resources, priorities, timelines, and performance.
• Develop capabilities and ensure team support.
• Oversee design and operation of scalable, secure platform infrastructure.
• Drive IaC adoption and Kubernetes evolution.
• Build central tooling, automation and self-service capabilities.
• Ensure services are resilient and observable.
• Collaborate with Product/Engineering teams to boost productivity.
• Communicate platform strategy and risks to senior stakeholders.
• Establish monitoring, logging and alerting.
• Use metrics to demonstrate impact and drive improvements.

Skills

Platform Engineering

DevOps

SRE

Cloud Architecture

AWS/GCP

Kubernetes

Kafka

Terraform

Ansible

CI/CD

Automation

Tools

Kubernetes

Kafka

Terraform

Ansible

Job description

Office location with Hybrid working: Hammersmith London

About the role and the Team:

We're looking for an experienced and highly skilled Head of Platform Engineering to lead our Platform Engineering function and shape the strategic direction of our platform infrastructure. This is a pivotal leadership role, responsible for building and evolving a scalable, secure and reliable technology platform that enables our engineering teams to deliver software quickly and effectively.

You'll lead a team of approximately 20 internal and external engineers, providing technical direction, developing engineering capability and creating a high-performing, collaborative culture.

You'll bring strong experience across DevOps, cloud-native technologies and modern platform engineering, with hands‑on knowledge of AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Kafka, Terraform and Ansible. Just as importantly, you'll understand how to build platforms that make life easier for product engineering teams through automation, self‑service and robust developer tooling.

What will you be doing?

Lead and develop the Platform Engineering team

• Lead, mentor and develop a team of around 20 internal and external engineers.
• Foster a collaborative, inclusive and high-performing engineering culture.
• Manage resources, priorities, delivery timelines and performance.
• Develop engineering capability and ensure the team has the skills and support required to succeed.

Shape and evolve our platform

• Oversee the design, development and ongoing operation of scalable, secure and highly reliable platform infrastructure.
• Establish and champion modern Platform Engineering and DevOps practices.
• Drive the adoption and effective use of Infrastructure as Code, particularly Terraform and Ansible.
• Lead the continued adoption and evolution of Kubernetes for container orchestration.
• Build centralised tooling, automation and self‑service capabilities that enable product engineering teams to work more efficiently.
• Ensure platform services are resilient, observable and designed with scalability and reliability in mind.

Lead our cloud strategy

• Provide technical leadership and expertise across AWS and GCP.
• Define and evolve cloud architecture in line with business requirements and future growth.
• Ensure cloud infrastructure is secure, resilient, scalable and cost‑effective.
• Identify opportunities to optimise cloud usage, improve efficiency and manage costs effectively.
• Provide leadership and oversight of event‑driven architecture using Kafka.
• Ensure reliable, scalable data streaming and processing capabilities.

Partner across Technology

• Work closely with Product and Engineering teams to understand their needs and provide platform capabilities that improve developer productivity.
• Collaborate with architecture, security, operations and other technology functions to ensure effective integration and alignment.
• Act as a senior technology leader, communicating platform strategy, progress, risks and opportunities clearly to senior stakeholders.
• Continuously assess emerging technologies and industry trends to identify opportunities to improve our platform.
• Drive improvements in platform reliability, performance, scalability and developer experience.
• Establish effective monitoring, logging and alerting capabilities.
• Use data and engineering metrics to identify opportunities for improvement and demonstrate the impact of Platform Engineering.

What we are looking for?:

• Significant experience leading Platform Engineering, DevOps, SRE or Cloud Engineering teams.
• Experience managing and developing sizeable engineering teams, including internal and external resources.
• Strong knowledge of AWS and/or GCP and cloud‑native architecture.
• Extensive experience with Kubernetes and containerised environments.
• Strong Infrastructure as Code experience, particularly Terraform and Ansible.
• Experience designing and operating event‑driven architectures using Kafka.
• A strong understanding of CI/CD, automation and modern DevOps practices.
• Experience building internal platforms, developer tooling and self‑service capabilities.
• A strong understanding of reliability, observability, security and scalability.
• Experience using engineering metrics and data to drive continuous improvement.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence engineers, technology leaders and senior stakeholders.

Why work for us?

We are proud to have been recognized as the Which? Great Value Broadband Provider in March 2026. In 2023, we were voted Broadband Provider of the Year at the Uswitch Telecoms Awards by 20,000 customers and received the Fair Terms Gold Award. Additionally, we have earned the Great Place to Work Certification (2022–23) and were named among the UK's Best Workplaces for Wellbeing (2022).

Some of our key Benefits

• Global Remote working for up to 2 week per year for those who are able to work remotely
• 25 days' paid holiday increasing each year, to a max of 35
• Extra days off for your birthday, moving home, wedding/civil partnership and to volunteer
• Private medical Insurance provided by AXA health
• Life assurance giving you cover of 4 times your base salary
• Partnership with the Kings Trust
• Our pension scheme matches your contributions up to 4%
• Retail offers — discounts from hundreds of recognisable brands
• Free Hyperoptic broadband if you live in a Hyperoptic area
• Enhanced pay for new parents

We're committed to providing equal opportunities to all applicants and employees. In fact, this is at the heart of our culture and values. We welcome applications from candidates from all walks of life.