Platform Engineering Lead/Platform Architect

FalconSmartIT; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

FalconSmartIT in London is seeking a Platform Engineering Lead to shape and run a new banking platform on Kubernetes in AWS. You will lead a small team, own production readiness, and drive security, reliability, and engineering standards across the platform and vendor ecosystem.

You will own architecture decisions, SOPs, and CI/CD promotion gates, collaborating with security, product, and central engineering teams. Hybrid work with strong governance and regulatory controls.

Qualifications

• Hands-on AWS, Kubernetes/GitOps and Terraform at scale with team or tech-lead experience.
• Solid grounding in PKI, mTLS, OAuth2/OIDC, and network/edge security.
• Experience running production platforms including DR and incident management.
• Experience writing architecture decisions and presenting to governance boards.
• CI/CD expertise and pragmatic controls in a regulated setting.
• Clear communicator across security, architecture and vendor stakeholders.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted engineering.
• Desirable: message-broker and observability tooling experience.
• Experience with SaaS banking vendors.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a small platform engineering team; set priorities, review designs and PRs, hire and onboard.
• Take the platform live: production readiness, DR testing, pen-test and vulnerability remediation.
• Run the platform: AWS, EKS, Terraform, GitOps, policy enforcement, messaging and observability; create runbooks and own incidents.
• Own vendor connectivity and security: private and mTLS integrations, certificate lifecycle, identity.
• Own architecture decisions: write and defend ADRs at architecture review boards.
• Set CI/CD and promotion standards: audited pipelines and release gates with central engineering.
• Plan and report: Jira backlog, status reporting, cost estimates, raise risks early.
• Support delivery partners onboarding new services onto the platform.

Skills

Team leadership

Mentoring

CI/CD mastery

Clear communicator

Security governance

Vendor stakeholder management

Problem solving

AI-assisted engineering

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Terraform

GitOps

Job description

Job Title: Platform Engineering Lead/Platform ArchitectJob Location: London (Hybrid - 4 days onsite)Job Type: FTEA UK financial institution has built a new banking platform on Kubernetes in AWS. You will lead the small platform engineering team that takes it through go-live and then runs it: you own the platform's reliability, security and engineering standards, and act as the link between the programme, central platform and security teams, and third-party vendors.What you will doLead and mentor a small team of platform engineers; set priorities, review designs and PRs, hire and onboard.Take the platform live: own production readiness, DR testing, pen-test and vulnerability remediation.Run the platform: AWS, EKS, Terraform, GitOps, policy enforcement, messaging and observability, with runbooks and incident ownership.Own vendor connectivity and security: private and mTLS integrations, certificate lifecycle and identity, working with vendor technical teams.Own architecture decisions: write and defend ADRs at architecture review boards.Set CI/CD and promotion standards: audited pipelines and release gates, agreed with central engineering.Plan and report: Jira backlog, status reporting, cost estimates; raise risks early.Support delivery partners onboarding new services onto the platform.EssentialHands-on AWS, Kubernetes/GitOps and Terraform at scale, with team or technical-lead experience.Solid grounding in PKI, mTLS, OAuth2/OIDC, and network and edge security.Experience running production platforms, including DR and incident management.Experience writing architecture decisions and presenting them to governance boards.CI/CD expertise and a pragmatic approach to controls in a regulated setting.Clear communicator across security, architecture and vendor stakeholders.Familiarity with AI-assisted engineering.DesirableFinancial services or payments experience.Message-broker and observability tooling experience.Experience with SaaS banking vendors.