Platform Engineer

Ascendion; Chester; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

An innovative company is on the lookout for a Platform Engineering Manager who excels in Java development and Site Reliability Engineering. This role requires a blend of technical expertise in building resilient systems and the ability to lead a team towards platform stability. The ideal candidate will have hands-on experience with technologies like Spring, Kafka, and Oracle DB, and will be instrumental in driving automation and operational excellence. Join a forward-thinking team that values collaboration and innovation in delivering robust solutions.

Qualifications

• Strong hands-on experience in Java development and SRE.
• Proven ability to lead platform stability and reliability efforts.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team in building and maintaining high-performance systems.
• Collaborate with product teams to implement platform improvements.

Skills

Java

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

Spring

Kafka

MuleSoft

Oracle DB

CI/CD

Infrastructure-as-Code

Job description

Job Description:

We are seeking a Platform Engineering Manager with a strong hands-on background in Java development and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). The ideal candidate will have a broad technical skillset across Java, Spring, MuleSoft, Kafka, and Oracle DB, and must be capable of leading platform stability efforts while contributing directly to development. Experience in building scalable, resilient systems is critical. Knowledge of payment systems is a plus.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead a team of platform engineers in building and maintaining robust, high-performance systems.
• Take ownership of platform stability, reliability, scalability, and performance.
• Collaborate closely with product teams, infrastructure, and DevOps to address platform issues and implement improvements.
• Architect and develop resilient backend systems primarily using Java, Spring, Kafka, and Oracle.
• Implement best practices for observability, incident response, and operational excellence in line with SRE principles.
• Drive automation and self-healing mechanisms across platform components.
• Provide technical leadership and hands-on coding as needed.
• Monitor, troubleshoot, and resolve production issues, conducting root cause analysis and driving long-term fixes.

Required Skills & Experience:

• Experience of software development and platform engineering experience.
• Strong Java expertise with deep understanding of backend design patterns and frameworks (Spring Boot preferred).
• Proven experience in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), including monitoring, alerting, and incident management.
• Hands-on experience with Kafka, MuleSoft, and Oracle DB.
• Familiarity with performance tuning, system design, and distributed computing concepts.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Jenkins, Terraform, Ansible) is a plus.
• Ability to lead and mentor engineers while remaining hands-on.
• Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.