_MADE Platform Engineering Lead

HKS, Inc.; City of Westminster; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading architecture firm in the UK seeks a Platform Engineer to drive the development and maintenance of internal platform infrastructure. The role emphasizes reducing cognitive load for developers by designing CI/CD pipelines, implementing Infrastructure as Code with Terraform, and managing Azure cloud strategies. Candidates should have at least 7 years in platform engineering, with substantial Azure experience, and demonstrate strong leadership in tech coordination. This role offers an opportunity to shape the future of the firm's software development process.

Benefits

Education reimbursement

Flexible working hours

Health insurance

Qualifications

• 7+ years in platform engineering or DevOps roles.
• Experience leading infrastructure initiatives is preferred.
• 5+ years with Microsoft Azure services.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain CI/CD pipeline infrastructure.
• Implement Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.
• Manage Azure cloud infrastructure optimization.

Skills

CI/CD pipeline design

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Microsoft Azure proficiency

Advanced coding in ASP.NET

Microservices architecture

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering

Tools

Terraform

Azure DevOps

Docker

Job description

Leads the development and maintenance of HKS's internal platform infrastructure that enables application development teams to build and deploy solutions faster, safer, and more consistently. This role focuses on reducing cognitive load for application developers through platform engineering principles, treating internal infrastructure as a product with developers as customers. Open mindset and willingness to embrace emerging platform technologies. Manages the firm's resources (people, processes and tools) and assignments with proficiency, fluency and aptitude. Teaches and mentors staff and effectively embodies and expresses the firm's values and mission.,

Responsibilities

• Designs, builds and maintains CI/CD pipeline infrastructure for all applications
• Implements Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform and ARM templates for Azure resource management
• Establishes and evolves microservices framework, API standards, and service contracts
• Creates and maintains developer self-service capabilities and internal tooling
• Leads Azure cloud infrastructure strategy, optimization and cost management
• Manages environment provisioning (dev, test, staging, production) through automation
• Implements disaster recovery, backup strategies and security frameworks
• Handles Azure networking, load balancing and application gateway configuration
• Reduces cognitive load on application development teams through platform abstractions
• Creates "golden path" templates, patterns and scaffolding tools for rapid development
• Gathers and acts on developer feedback to continuously improve platform services
• Streamlines onboarding processes and reduce environment setup time for new developers
• Designs and implements data models that represent architectural concepts, project hierarchies and design workflows
• Establishes architectural workflow automation capabilities and data standardization across design phases
• Implements centralized logging, monitoring, and alerting systems using Azure Monitor and Application Insights
• Builds distributed tracing capabilities and performance monitoring across microservices
• Establishes security frameworks, authentication/authorization systems and secrets management
• Ensures compliance with architectural industry standards and security best practices
• Stays current with platform engineering trends, tools, and industry best practices

Shared Team Responsibilities

• Collaborates closely with Application Development teams to understand platform requirements
• Facilitates platform-application integration and resolves cross-team dependencies
• Provides technical leadership in combined sprint planning and dependency management
• Conducts platform adoption sessions and knowledge transfer with application teams and measures platform adoption, usage metrics, and developer satisfaction
• Maintains platform roadmap aligned with application team needs and business objectives
• Prioritizes platform features based on developer feedback and organizational impact
• Manages platform versioning, deprecation policies and backward compatibility
• Architects test automation strategy for platform services and integration points and implements automated testing frameworks for CI/CD pipelines
• Leads cross-team integration testing between platform and application services
• Coaches application developers on testing practices and platform testing tools
• Leads sophisticated CI/CD implementation for both platform and application deployments
• Manages complex deployment orchestration across multiple microservices
• Implements automated rollback mechanisms and deployment safety measures
• Optimizes deployment frequency and reduces lead-time for changes
• Experiments with emerging technologies (AI/ML, containers, serverless) for platform enhancement
• Integrates Azure AI services to enable intelligent capabilities across platform services to show how AI fits into platform strategy
• Identifies opportunities to reduce manual processes through platform automation
• Makes strategic architectural decisions that enable sustainable team scaling
• Stays current with platform engineering trends, tools, and industry best practices

Qualifications

• Computer Science, Software Engineering Bachelor's degree, or equivalent combination of education and experience
• Typically, 7+ years of experience in platform engineering, DevOps, or senior software development roles
• Typically, 3+ years of experience leading infrastructure or platform initiatives
• Typically 5+ years with Microsoft Azure including App Services, Functions, Container Instances; advanced proficiency in Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Storage
• Proven experience scaling development teams through platform engineering
• Proven experience managing multi-team technical coordination and dependencies

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

• Advanced – expert-level experience, knowledge or skills
• Intermediate – experience, knowledge or skills required to produce high-quality solutions or work
• Basic – familiar with primary concepts or capabilities and may perform elementary functions depending on role
• Advanced experience designing and operating CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps), Infrastructure as Code (ARM, Terraform), internal developer platforms, self-service tooling, observability, and platform-as-a-product practices focused on developer experience required
• Advanced proficiency in ASP.NET, React, modern web frameworks required; intermediate experience required with microservices, API design, service contracts, containerization (Docker), orchestration, and SQL/NoSQL database design and optimization
• Intermediate knowledge of networking, security, monitoring, governance, compliance, and Azure AI services (Azure OpenAI, Azure Machine Learning) required
• Advanced experience designing complex, domain-specific data models particularly for architectural and engineering contexts required
• Advanced experience implementing AI/ML solutions using Azure AI platforms required
• Intermediate experience integrating architectural and engineering software (AutoCAD, Revit, BIM/CAD APIs) preferred
• Intermediate strong understanding of architectural design processes, project phases, and data relationships across design workflows preferred
• Advanced background in Team Topologies and platform engineering frameworks required
• Proven ability to balance technical excellence with business requirements required
• Advanced ability to lead cross-functional teams in agile development environments required
• Advanced communication skills for technical and non-technical stakeholders required
• Advanced experience managing platform adoption and change management processes required
• Advanced ability to work on multiple platform initiatives simultaneously while maintaining quality required
• Advanced attention to detail and commitment to operational excellence required
• Advanced ability to handle sensitive infrastructure information with high confidentiality required
• Intermediate knowledge of security frameworks, compliance requirements, and governance required
• Intermediate experience implementing AI/ML solutions using Azure AI Services, Azure OpenAI, or Azure Machine Learning required

• Travel may be required