Lead Platform Engineer

SF Technology Partners; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

SF Technology Partners is recruiting for a senior platform engineer to help build, operate and improve multi-account AWS platforms, Kubernetes/EKS, and internal developer tooling for critical national services in a hybrid UK setting.

The role emphasizes hands-on engineering, platform ownership and mentoring, with the opportunity to influence standards and technical direction across large-scale programmes.

Qualifications

• Experience with AWS and Kubernetes/EKS in production environments.
• Hands-on IaC with Terraform/Terragrunt/OpenTofu and CI/CD tooling.
• Ability to explain technical decisions, trade-offs and production performance.

Responsibilities

• You will build, operate and improve platforms used by national services.
• Mentor engineers and influence technical direction beyond your team.
• Contribute to security, reliability and engineering standards.

Skills

Production engineering

Platform ownership

Mentoring engineers

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes / EKS

Terraform

Terragrunt / OpenTofu

GitHub Actions

GitLab CI

Jenkins

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Grafana

Datadog

Job description

Midlands and North of England | Hybrid (2-6 days per month)

Join a major global technology and engineering organisation delivering some of the UK’s most significant public-sector digital programmes.

You will help build, operate and improve the platforms behind critical national services used by millions of people. These are complex, highly regulated environments where security, reliability, resilience and engineering quality genuinely matter.

This is not an architecture-only or delivery-management position. We are looking for engineers who still enjoy building, automating, troubleshooting and improving platforms while mentoring others and influencing technical direction.

The opportunity

You could be involved in:

• Building secure, multi-account AWS platforms and landing zones
• Engineering and operating production Kubernetes and EKS environments
• Creating reusable Terraform modules and automated infrastructure capabilities
• Building internal developer platforms, self-service tooling and golden paths
• Developing shared CI/CD platforms using GitHub Actions, GitLab or Jenkins
• Implementing GitOps using ArgoCD or Flux
• Improving observability with OpenTelemetry, Prometheus and Grafana
• Automating security, compliance and operational processes
• Troubleshooting complex production incidents
• Improving platform reliability, resilience and developer experience
• Setting engineering standards and helping teams adopt them
• Mentoring engineers while remaining actively involved in technical delivery

You will work alongside experienced engineers on large-scale programmes, with the opportunity to influence how modern engineering platforms are designed and operated across major government services.

What we are looking for

You should have strong production experience across several of the following:

• AWS - Must
• Terraform, Terragrunt or OpenTofu - Must
• Kubernetes or EKS - Must
• GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or Jenkins
• Infrastructure as Code
• Python, Go or Bash automation
• Networking and IAM
• Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry or Datadog
• Production support and incident response

You do not need experience with every tool listed.

What matters is your ability to explain:

• What you personally built
• Why it was needed
• How it worked
• The technical decisions and trade-offs involved
• How it performed in production
• How you improved the experience of other engineers

You may already lead engineers, own a platform capability or be progressing toward broader technical leadership.

You will bring strong hands-on engineering experience, credible platform ownership and the ability to influence technical decisions beyond your immediate team.

You will already operate as a senior technical authority.

You will bring deeper evidence of production ownership, engineering scale, technical decision-making, mentoring and the ability to lead conversations with senior client engineering teams.

Why consider the opportunity?

• Work on critical digital services operating at national scale
• Solve complex engineering problems in secure, regulated environments
• Build modern cloud-native and internal developer platforms
• Influence platform strategy, standards and engineering practices
• Work alongside a large community of experienced cloud and platform specialists
• Access significant training, certification and career-development opportunities
• Progress toward broader technical leadership, Principal or SME positions

Location and working arrangements

We are recruiting across the Midlands and North, including:

Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Birmingham, Leeds.

The role is hybrid, combining home working with office. (2-6 days per month)

This is not a fully remote position, and onsite requirements will vary depending on the programme, delivery phase and security environment.

Security clearance

Candidates must be eligible to complete BPSS checks and obtain UK Security Check clearance.

This will normally require a suitable period of UK residency, permanent UK working rights and the ability to complete the relevant background checks.

We are particularly interested in engineers who combine strong technical judgement with platform ownership, clear communication and the potential to become future technical leaders.