Head of Platform / Senior Platform Manager

UFORCE; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

UFORCE, a defence-technology company based in London, seeks a hands-on Head of Platform / Senior Platform Manager to own secure infrastructure capability. You will enable customers to deploy, operate and recover platforms independently across air-gapped and cloud environments.

You will lead architecture, automation and operations, setting standards and growing the platform team while collaborating with Security, Product and Delivery to balance assurance with velocity.

Qualifications

• Proven experience deploying cloud-style infrastructure onto customer-owned, on-premise or bare-metal systems.
• Experience designing for air-gapped, disconnected, sovereign or similarly restricted production environments.
• Experience leading a substantial high-assurance audit or compliance programme, such as SOC 2 Type 2, PCI DSS, DEFSTAN 05-138 or FedRAMP.
• Strong Linux, Kubernetes, infrastructure automation and troubleshooting expertise.
• The ability to write code and scripts, configure infrastructure primitives and personally debug complex platform issues.
• Experience designing systems that remain supportable when vendor engineers have limited or no access to the customer environment.
• Strong technical leadership and the ability to align senior engineers and cross-functional partners.
• Experience navigating the technical, security and certification constraints associated with highly regulated deployments.

Responsibilities

• Design and deliver secure, repeatable infrastructure for air-gapped, on-premise, customer-hosted and cloud environments.
• Build infrastructure-as-code capable of standing up isolated environments reliably on reference hardware.
• Provision and operate Kubernetes across cloud and bare-metal infrastructure.
• Develop automated configuration, deployment, upgrade and recovery processes.
• Create platforms that customers can install, monitor, maintain and troubleshoot independently.
• Own core infrastructure foundations across identity, networking, compute, storage, secrets, CI/CD and observability.
• Translate security, assurance and accreditation requirements into automated, auditable platform controls.
• Establish service ownership, SLOs, incident response, problem management and resilience practices.
• Partner with Security, Product and Delivery teams to balance assurance requirements with delivery velocity.
• Provide technical leadership, set engineering standards and help grow the platform capability over time.

Skills

Cloud infrastructure

On-premise deployment

Air-gapped environments

Audit/compliance leadership

Linux

Kubernetes

Infrastructure automation

CI/CD and observability

Leadership

Regulated deployments

Tools

Terraform

Pulumi

Ansible

Kubernetes

OpenShift

Docker

MAAS

IPMI/Redfish

Job description

UFORCE exists to make aggression unaffordable.
Founded in Ukraine and headquartered in London, UFORCE is a defence-technology company with operations across Europe, the United States and Asia.
UFORCE builds uncrewed vessels, ground robotics and aircraft, autonomy software, and the command-and-control layer that operates them together. Each platform is deployable on its own, and stronger as part of the system. Its product lines include the MAGURA family of uncrewed surface vessels, the NEMESIS family of strike platforms, the LIUT family of ground robotic platforms, and counter-UAS systems.

We are looking for a hands-on Head of Platform / Senior Platform Manager to own the architecture, automation and operation of our secure infrastructure capability.

You will solve a distinctive engineering challenge: enabling customers to deploy, operate, monitor and recover our platform independently, including in environments where UFORCE has no direct access to systems. You will combine deep technical execution with platform leadership, establishing repeatable deployment patterns today and helping shape the team as the function grows.

What You'll Do

• Design and deliver secure, repeatable infrastructure for air-gapped, on-premise, customer-hosted and cloud environments.

• Build infrastructure-as-code capable of standing up isolated environments reliably on reference hardware.

• Provision and operate Kubernetes across cloud and bare-metal infrastructure.

• Develop automated configuration, deployment, upgrade and recovery processes.

• Create platforms that customers can install, monitor, maintain and troubleshoot independently.

• Own core infrastructure foundations across identity, networking, compute, storage, secrets, CI/CD and observability.

• Translate security, assurance and accreditation requirements into automated, auditable platform controls.

• Establish service ownership, SLOs, incident response, problem management and resilience practices.

• Partner with Security, Product and Delivery teams to balance assurance requirements with delivery velocity.

• Provide technical leadership, set engineering standards and help grow the platform capability over time.

Required Skills

• Proven experience deploying cloud-style infrastructure onto customer-owned, on-premise or bare-metal systems.

• Experience designing for air-gapped, disconnected, sovereign or similarly restricted production environments.

• Experience leading a substantial high-assurance audit or compliance programme, such as SOC 2 Type 2, PCI DSS, DEFSTAN 05-138 or FedRAMP.

• Strong Linux, Kubernetes, infrastructure automation and troubleshooting expertise.

• The ability to write code and scripts, configure infrastructure primitives and personally debug complex platform issues.

• Experience designing systems that remain supportable when vendor engineers have limited or no access to the customer environment.

• Strong technical leadership and the ability to align senior engineers and cross-functional partners.

• Experience navigating the technical, security and certification constraints associated with highly regulated deployments.

Nice to Have

• Experience in defence, government, banking, critical national infrastructure or another highly regulated sector.

• Experience designing or operating secure R&D and software-development enclaves.

• Familiarity with FIPS 140-3, DEFSTAN 05-138, STANAG, NIST or Cyber Essentials Plus.

• Practical knowledge of zero-trust access, bastion or jump-host workflows, immutable logging and automated vulnerability management.

• Experience coaching engineers, leading a small team or building a platform function.

• Experience working in a start-up, scale-up or urgent operational environment.

Technology Stack

You will work across:

• Kubernetes: K3s, RKE2 and OpenShift

• Infrastructure as code: Terraform, Pulumi or comparable IaC tooling

• Configuration management: Ansible or equivalent

• Linux administration: Ubuntu and RHEL

• Bare-metal provisioning: PXE, MAAS, IPMI/Redfish or similar technologies

• Container tooling: Docker, containerd and Helm

The nature of combat has changed.

Tomorrow’s battlefield success depends on autonomy, speed, and adaptability.

And UFORCE is ready.

Are You?