Principal Infrastructure Engineer

Orbis Group; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Orbis Group, a specialist UK insurer, is seeking a Principal Infrastructure Engineer for its IT Operations & Engineering team. You’ll be the senior technical voice across on-prem, Azure, identity and platform services, enabling a move to automation-first, platform-led development.

You’ll lead design, resilience and standards, mentor engineers and collaborate with suppliers to ensure secure, resilient infrastructure. The role is hybrid in London.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in Infrastructure, Systems or Platform Engineering in a complex enterprise environment.
• Strong Azure expertise and knowledge of modern cloud technologies.
• Advanced automation and IaC skills: Terraform, PowerShell and Ansible.
• Deep knowledge of Active Directory and Microsoft Entra ID.
• Solid understanding of platform engineering, CI/CD and observability.

Responsibilities

• Be the senior technical authority and final escalation point across infrastructure, cloud, identity and platform services.
• Deputise for the IT Manager and help set the team’s technical direction.
• Drive the design, resilience and continuous improvement of on-prem and Azure platforms.
• Lead root cause analysis on complex issues and major incidents, and ensure fixes stick.
• Shape engineering standards, architecture decisions and platform best practice.
• Build automation, Infrastructure as Code and reusable platform capabilities the team can build on.
• Hold third-party suppliers to a high technical bar.
• Mentor engineers and champion secure, resilient, automate-it-first habits.

Skills

Infrastructure engineering

Azure expertise

Automation / IaC

Active Directory / Entra ID

CI/CD / Observability

Windows / Linux / Networking

Tools

Terraform

PowerShell

Ansible

Active Directory

Microsoft Entra ID

Job description

Location: City of London (hybrid pattern)

The company

Our client is a specialist UK insurer backed by tens of billions of pounds in assets.

What are we looking for?

We're looking for a Principal Infrastructure Engineer to join the IT Operations team. You'll be the senior technical voice across infrastructure, Azure cloud, identity, and platform services.

What is the IT Operations & Engineering team?

The team designs, builds and runs the platforms the whole business depends on, across on-premises and Azure. It's a hands-on team in a regulated environment, partway through moving to an automation-first, platform-led way of working. This role leads that shift.

Here’s how you’ll contribute to the team:

• Be the senior technical authority and final escalation point across infrastructure, cloud, identity and platform services.
• Deputise for the IT Manager and help set the team’s technical direction.
• Drive the design, resilience and continuous improvement of on-prem and Azure platforms.
• Lead root cause analysis on complex issues and major incidents, and make sure the fixes stick.
• Shape engineering standards, architecture decisions and platform best practice.
• Build automation, Infrastructure as Code and reusable platform capabilities the team can build on.
• Hold third-party suppliers to a high technical bar.
• Mentor engineers and champion secure, resilient, automate-it-first habits.

This role will give you the opportunity to:

• Own the technical direction. This isn't a ticket queue. You'll set the standards, and others will build to them.
• Modernise a real enterprise estate. It's hybrid, regulated and business-critical, which means the engineering problems are genuinely interesting.
• Lead without leaving the keyboard. You'll stay hands-on while shaping how the wider team works.
• See your work matter. The platforms you run help pay pensions to hundreds of thousands of people.

Desirable skills and experience

• Extensive experience in Infrastructure, Systems or Platform Engineering within a complex enterprise environment.
• Strong Azure expertise and a good grasp of modern cloud technologies.
• Advanced automation and IaC skills: Terraform, PowerShell and Ansible.
• Deep knowledge of Active Directory and Microsoft Entra ID.
• A solid understanding of platform engineering, CI/CD and observability.
• Broad infrastructure knowledge across Windows, Linux, networking and enterprise platforms.
• A track record of influencing technical direction and engineering standards.
• Financial services or other regulated-environment experience would be a great plus.

Here are some of the technologies in the estate. It's not an exhaustive list, and nobody expects you to know everything, but it gives a flavour:

• Endpoint: Intune, SCCM
• Virtualisation: hypervisor and hyperconverged infrastructure

About you

• You're the person others go to when something's properly broken.
• If you've done something twice, you automate it the third time.
• You build for resilience and security by design, not as an afterthought.
• You're comfortable pushing back on suppliers and making the case for the right technical decision.
• You enjoy bringing other engineers up with you.
• You can explain complex technical problems clearly to engineers and non-technical stakeholders alike.