Infrastructure Engineering Manager

Avantia; Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Learning and Growth

Health and Wellbeing

Financial Security and Reward

Time Off

Genuine Flexible Working

Purpose and Community

Job summary

Homeprotect is seeking an Infrastructure Engineering Manager to lead a small team responsible for VMware, Windows Server, AD, storage and networking across on‑prem and cloud (Azure and GCP). You’ll own disaster recovery end‑to‑end, drive cost‑effective hosting, and partner with Security on zero-trust initiatives.

You’ll work in a hybrid model with weekly office presence in the UK, shaping the future of our hosting platform while mentoring engineers and ensuring reliable services for customers.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading an infrastructure, cloud, or operations engineering team with line management.
• Hands-on background in enterprise infrastructure: VMware, Windows Server, AD, storage, backup, networking.
• Experience running infrastructure in public cloud, ideally Azure and GCP.
• Disaster recovery design, testing, and failover/failback.
• Automation-first mindset using scripting / IaC to remove manual work.
• Strong security instincts across identity, access, email security and patching.
• Commercial awareness: managing suppliers, contracts, renewals, and infrastructure budget.
• Ability to communicate risk and trade‑offs to engineers, leaders and auditors.
• Familiarity with regulatory resilience requirements (FCA or similar) is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a team of systems and cloud engineers, including a Lead Systems Engineer.
• Own the infrastructure roadmap across data centre, Azure, and GCP; plan migrations when needed.
• Manage cloud foundations, landing zones, networking, and hybrid connectivity.
• Ensure lifecycle plans and standardised patterns across sites and environments.
• Own DR end‑to‑end: tested runbooks and failover readiness.
• Lead incident response and problem management with a focus on root‑cause.
• Collaborate with Security to enforce identity, access, and data protection.
• Manage supplier relationships, budgets and contract renewals to prevent waste.

Skills

Team leadership

Cloud infrastructure

Disaster recovery

Automation / IaC

Clear communication

Incident management

Security mindset

Budget management

Regulatory awareness

Tools

VMware

Windows Server

Active Directory

Storage & backup

Networking (firewalls, VPNs)

Linux fundamentals

Terraform / Ansible

Entra ID / SAML

Azure

GCP

Job description

Cover for Almost every Home

We founded Homeprotect on a simple principle - to provide protection to people underserved by the home insurance industry. Since 2002, we've been combining smart technology with real human expertise to protect hundreds of thousands of unique homes across the UK, and we're just getting started.

About Homeprotect

We founded Homeprotect on a simple principle - to provide protection to people underserved by the home insurance industry. Since 2002, we've been combining smart technology with real human expertise to protect hundreds of thousands of unique homes across the UK, and we're just getting started. If you're someone who loves solving interesting problems, taking ownership and working with a team that aims high, speaks up and lifts each other, Homeprotect is a place where you can do meaningful work, grow your career and make a real difference for our customers.

What It's Like To Work Here

Our customers come from all walks of life and so do our people. We're a small but perfectly formed team of insurance specialists, technologists, data scientists and customer champions - all bringing individual expertise, an appetite for innovation and a shared ambition to protect the homes and things people love. We work at pace, but we trust our people to work in a way that brings out their best. You'll collaborate closely across teams, have real ownership from day one and see the impact you have first-hand with flexible working to help you balance the needs of your role with the rhythm of your life. We've been recognised as a Great Place to Work UK for seven consecutive years - most recently ranked 29th nationally, jumping 71 places in a single year.

ROLE PURPOSE

Homeprotect is transforming the way insurance technology is built, run, and secured. Our product teams are becoming more independent, and as an FCA-regulated insurer we need to show that our critical services can recover when things go wrong. All of that depends on infrastructure that's secure, recoverable, and simple to run. As Infrastructure Engineering Manager, you'll lead the team that owns it. Today our infrastructure runs across our data centre estate (VMware, storage, and networking), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Azure, alongside core services such as directory, certificates, and email. You'll own technical disaster recovery end to end. Our hosting will keep evolving, so you'll need to be flexible and open to moving workloads to wherever they're best run, as and when it makes sense. This is a hands‑on leadership role in a small team. You'll stay close to the technology: reviewing designs, leading major incidents, and stepping in on critical work. But your main job is to build a team that runs the estate well without relying on any one person, and to leave the estate simpler than you found it. You'll work alongside the Platform Engineering Manager and our Information Security team, guided by Homeprotect's Engineering Excellence Framework and Guiding Principles.

Key Responsibilities

Team Leadership and People Development

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of systems and cloud engineers, including an experienced Lead Systems Engineer.
• Set clear quarterly goals and priorities, give regular feedback, and use the Engineering Excellence Framework for development and career conversations.
• Remove key-person risk: make sure every critical system has current documentation, tested runbooks, and at least two people who can support it.
• Hire well as the team grows, bringing in the cloud and infrastructure skills our hosting needs over time.
• Build a culture of ownership, calm incident handling, and continuous improvement.

Infrastructure Strategy and Hosting

• Own the infrastructure roadmap across our data centre, Azure, and GCP, keeping the estate safe, supported, and cost‑effective.
• Assess where each workload is best hosted, and plan and deliver migrations between data centre and cloud where they make sense, in planned, low‑risk steps.
• Own our cloud foundations on Azure and GCP, including landing zones, cloud networking, and connectivity between our offices, hosting, and clouds. Agree clear boundaries with Platform Engineering, who own the developer platform built on top.
• Keep the estate current, with lifecycle plans that replace operating systems, hardware, and services well before they fall out of support.
• Standardise how our sites and environments are built, so new locations and services follow a documented design rather than one‑off decisions.

Resilience and Disaster Recovery

• Own technical disaster recovery (DR) end to end: recovery tiers for every critical service, tested runbooks, and evidence that we can recover within agreed impact tolerances.
• Run a regular DR testing programme that moves from proof‑of‑concept tests to realistic failover and failback of critical services.
• Work with business continuity and Risk colleagues to support FCA operational resilience, mapping our important business services to the technology behind them.
• Make sure resilience is designed into new and migrated services from day one, not added later.

Operations and Security

• Own the reliability of our networks, servers, storage, backup, email, and directory services, including monitoring, capacity, patching, and change.
• Lead the response to infrastructure incidents, and use problem management to fix root causes rather than symptoms.
• Partner with Information Security to put controls in place and evidence them, including secure access, email security, data loss prevention, and our move towards zero trust.
• Agree clear escalation routes and service levels with Workplace Technology and Platform Engineering, so issues land with the right team first time.

Suppliers, Cost and Governance

• Own the technical relationship with our hosting, network, and infrastructure suppliers, and hold them to agreed service levels.
• Manage the infrastructure budget and cloud spend, with clear cost visibility and guardrails that catch waste early.
• Plan renewals and exits well ahead of time, so contract dates never force our technical decisions.
• Keep architecture decisions, standards, and documentation current, so the estate is understood independently of any one person.

Essential

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

• Proven experience leading an infrastructure, cloud, or operations engineering team, including line management, hiring, and developing engineers. This isn't a first‑time management role.
• Strong hands‑on background in enterprise infrastructure: VMware virtualisation, Windows Server and Active Directory, storage and backup, and networking (firewalls, VPNs, routing, and DNS), Linux fundamentals and knowledge of infrastructure as code tools e.g. terraform/ansible.
• Identity Entra ID, SAML, Conditional Access Policies
• Experience running infrastructure in public cloud, ideally Azure and GCP, including landing zones, cloud networking, and hybrid connectivity.
• A track record of designing, testing, and improving disaster recovery, including replication‑based failover and failback.
• Good security instincts across identity, secure access, email security, and patching, built from working closely with security teams.
• Commercial awareness: managing suppliers, contracts, renewals, and an infrastructure budget.
• An automation‑first mindset, using scripting and infrastructure as code to remove manual, repeatable work.
• Clear communication with engineers, senior leaders, and auditors, explaining risk and trade‑offs in plain language.

Desirable

• Experience planning and delivering workload migrations between on‑premise and cloud.
• Experience in financial services or insurance, particularly FCA operational resilience requirements.
• Familiarity with our stack: Zerto, Pure Storage, FortiGate, Cisco Secure Access, Darktrace, Microsoft 365 with Defender for Office 365, and Entra ID.
• Hands‑on infrastructure as code and scripting, such as Terraform and PowerShell.
• Experience of incident, problem, and change management in a regulated environment.

Benefits

Learning and Growth: We invest in your development through structured learning, mentoring, buddying, on‑the‑job experience and cross‑functional projects. We support role‑relevant professional qualifications where they'll make the biggest difference, and our Lunch and Learn sessions to help you stay connected to what’s going on right across the business.

Health and Wellbeing: Your wellbeing matters here. We offer private healthcare through BUPA, an Employee Assistance Programme covering legal, financial and counselling support for you, a Wellbeing Centre with online tools and resources, regular wellbeing seminars and workshops, annual flu jabs and an annual eye care voucher.

Financial Security and Reward: We offer an annual discretionary bonus scheme upto 30% of your base pay, life insurance at four times your salary, and a pension with Aegon. You'll also receive a significant discount on Homeprotect home insurance - with a friends and family discount too, and a staff referral bonus when someone you recommend joins the team.

Time Off: 25 days' annual leave plus bank holidays, with the option to buy or sell up to five additional days each year.

Genuine Flexible Working We trust our people to work in a way that best suits them - with flexible working to balance the needs of your role with the rhythm of your life. We ask that everyone comes into the office at least once a week, as we believe in‑person connection is important for collaboration, culture and building great relationships. You'll receive a homeworking starter kit from day one and can claim towards additional home office equipment within your first six months.

Purpose and Community: We care about more than just the work. Through our charity partnership with Refuge, the United Kingdom's largest specialist domestic abuse charity and regular social, wellbeing and charitable events throughout the year, there are plenty of ways to connect, give back and feel part of something bigger.

UNIQUE AS STANDARD

We're proud to be an equal opportunity employer and actively encourage applications from all backgrounds. We believe in celebrating difference - everything that makes both our customers and our people unique. We consider visa sponsorship on a case by case basis for the right candidate, so please don't let that stop you from applying.

We encourage you to let us know if you need any extra help with your application or have any requirements at any stage of the recruitment journey, we want the process to work for you.

Your data will be maintained in line with our recruitment data privacy policy.

Regulatory Responsibilities

As an FCA regulated insurer, doing the right thing isn't a compliance requirement - it's simply how we work. All colleagues are expected to uphold the FCA Individual Conduct Rules (1–6) and act with integrity, due skill and care, openness with regulators and a genuine commitment to delivering good outcomes for our customers.

You'll work within approved processes and authority limits, keep accurate and auditable records, protect data under UK GDPR and our information security policies, elevate risks and exceptions promptly, report incidents, breaches and any financial crime or sanctions concerns (including via whistleblowing), support vulnerable customers with reasonable adjustments, and complete all mandatory training to maintain competence.

If the role falls within SM&CR, a supplementary document outlining the key regulatory responsibilities will be provided.

We founded Homeprotect on a simple principle - to provide protection to people underserved by the home insurance industry. Our smart tech enables our customers to get an instant, online quote to cover a huge range of complex needs, and our customer support teams are on hand when only a real person will do. Our insurance has already empowered hundreds of thousands of people to protect their homes and the things they love. Whoever you are and wherever you live, with Homeprotect we've got you covered.