Platform Desktop Engineering Manager

G-Research; City of Westminster; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus

Lunch provided

30 days annual leave

Pension 9%

Healthcare

Cycle-to-work

Company events

Job summary

G-Research is seeking a Platform Desktop Engineering Manager in London to lead a team responsible for the platform desktop service. You will ensure availability, security and evolution of the estate, collaborating with Linux Engineering and Security, while guiding cross-team dependencies and vendor management.

You will hire, mentor and develop platform engineers, drive automation, image builds and provisioning, and balance operational work with strategic project delivery to accelerate discovery.

Qualifications

• Hands-on Linux expertise with package management, performance troubleshooting and log analysis.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines for OS image creation using Dagger, Packer, Jenkins or Bash.
• Strong understanding of enterprise security, vulnerability and patch management.
• Proven ability to own and improve production services end to end.

Responsibilities

• Hire, onboard and develop Platform Desktop Engineers with clear objectives and career growth.
• Manage service performance: availability, estate health, patching and user experience.
• Own the support model: SLAs, incident management and escalation paths.
• Balance operational demands with longer-term engineering priorities and roadmap delivery.
• Define and report metrics for service performance and estate health.

Skills

Linux

CI/CD pipelines

Stakeholder management

Communication

Security awareness

Tools

Dagger

Packer

Jenkins

Bash

OpenStack

Ironic

Job description

We tackle the most complex problems in quantitative finance, by bringing scientific clarity to financial complexity.

From our London HQ, we unite world-class researchers and engineers in an environment that values deep exploration and methodical execution — because the best ideas take time to evolve. Together we’re building a world-class platform to amplify our teams’ most powerful ideas.

As part of our engineering team, you’ll shape the platforms and tools that drive high-impact research – designing systems that scale, accelerate discovery and support innovation across the firm.

Take the next step in your career.

The role

The Platform Desktop Engineering team is a new team within Core Infrastructure, responsible for the platform desktop.

As Platform Desktop Engineering Manager, you will build and lead the team, taking accountability for the availability, security and evolution of the platform desktop service.

This is a hands‑on management roles requiring strong technical knowledge of Linux environments. You will stay close to the build pipeline, provisioning tooling and security posture, enabling you to review technical decisions, assess risk and hold partner teams and vendors to account.

The role had a broad remit, spanning image builds, provisioning, security, monitoring and hardware. You will establish the team’s standards and priorities from the ground up, protecting engineers’ focus and making clear decisions about scope.

Working closely with Linux Engineering, Security and wider infrastructure teams, you will foster a collaborative environment where engineers are encouraged to challenge, contribute ideas and act on them.

Key responsibilities of the role include:

• Hiring, onboarding and developing Platform Desktop Engineers, including objectives, feedback and career development


• Managing service performance, including availability, estate health, patching , provisioning and user experience


• Owning the support model, including service levels, request and incident management and escalation paths


• Balancing operational demands with planned engineering work and longer-term priorities


• Delivering the estate roadmap across image builds, provisioning tooling, automation and hardware refreshes


• Overseeing change management, communications and post-incident improvements


• Defining and reporting metrics that provide visbility of service performance and estate health


• Managing capacity, budget and hardware lifecycle across physical and virtual resources


• Working with Linux Engineering, Security, Identity, Tech Support and other partner teams to manage dependencies and escalations


• Supporting joiner, mover and leaver processes in partnership with HR

Who are we looking for?

The ideal candidate will have the following skills and experience:

• Experience leading an infrastructure, platform or endpoint engineering team


• Strong hands‑on Linux expertise, including package management, performance troubleshooting and log analysis


• Good understanding of CI/CD pipelines for OS image creation using tools such as Dagger, Packer, Jenkins or Bash


• Experience supporting bare metal and VM provisioning at scale, ideally using OpenStack and Ironic


• Strong understanding of enterprise security, including vulnerability and patch management


• Sound judgement, balancing security best practice with pragmatic risk‑based decisions


• Understanding of hardware provisioning and lifecycle management, including diagnostics and vendor management


• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence priorities across teams


• Experience owning and improving production services end to end

Why join us?

• Highly competitive compensation plus annual discretionary bonus


• Lunch provided (via Just Eat for Business) and dedicated barista bar


• 30 days’ annual leave


• 9% company pension contributions


• Informal dress code and excellent work/life balance


• Comprehensive healthcare and life assurance


• Cycle-to-work scheme


• Monthly company events

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