Principal Platform & Infrastructure Engineer

Imagination Technologies Limited; West of England; Hybrid; GBP 100,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Imagination Technologies Limited is seeking a Principal Platform & Infrastructure Engineer to lead end-to-end platform architecture across bare-metal, virtualization, networking, and cloud. You will shape how the platform is deployed, secured and operated, guiding the team with established patterns.

In this senior role, you will own on-prem virtualization (Proxmox/VMware), design hybrid Azure patterns, RBAC and secrets management, and build repeatable provisioning with Terraform and Ansible.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in infrastructure/platform engineering and ownership of production systems.
• Hands-on on-prem virtualization with Proxmox/VMware, not cloud-only.
• Strong production experience with Azure and hybrid/multi-cloud patterns.
• Solid networking fundamentals including VLANs, firewall design, DMZ.
• Experience designing RBAC, authentication/authorization systems (OAuth2/OIDC, SAML, service principals), and secrets management.
• Strong Terraform experience (modules, state management, multi-environment patterns) and Ansible for provisioning.
• Linux-centric environments; shell scripting skills.
• Experience securing systems bridging on-prem and cloud boundaries.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end platform architecture: bare-metal through cloud and orchestration infrastructure.
• Design and implement the on-prem virtualization layer (Proxmox/VMware) for clusters and dev/test envs.
• Architect hybrid Azure architecture including compute bursting and workload placement.
• Define network topology with subnetting, VLANs, firewalls, and secure ingress/egress.
• Design and implement identity, authentication, authorization: RBAC, OAuth2/OIDC, SAML, service principals.
• Own secrets management strategy (Vault, Azure Key Vault) and prevent leaks.
• Build and maintain IaC (Terraform) and configuration management (Ansible).
• Define security baselines: patching cadence, vulnerability scanning, logging.
• Mentor team on infra and security patterns; assist incident response and capacity planning.
• Evaluate build-vs-buy decisions for infrastructure tooling.

Skills

Infra engineering

On-prem virtualization

Azure cloud

Terraform

Ansible

RBAC / IAM

Secrets management

Shell scripting

Networking fundamentals

Security best practices

Tools

Proxmox

VMware

Vault

Azure Key Vault

Job description

Principal Platform & Infrastructure Engineer

Job no: 502913
Work type: Experienced Professional
Location: Kings Langley UK, Bristol UK
Categories: Graphics

The role

We are building a modern orchestration platform to replace a legacy system of ad-hoc scripts that coordinate long-running, resource-intensive compute jobs across on-premises HPC/HTC infrastructure and cloud environments. The platform must give engineers clear visibility into multi-day job pipelines, respond intelligently to failures, and scale compute capacity elastically between on-prem hardware and the cloud during peak demand.

This is a foundational, greenfield build. You will be the senior-most voice on infrastructure, security, and platform architecture, working closely with a software/application engineer who owns the orchestration logic and application-layer design. You'll set the technical direction for how the platform is deployed, secured, and operated — establishing patterns the rest of the team will follow, rather than discovering them through trial and error.

We are intentionally vague here about the specific domain and tooling; the technical depth and architectural challenges are what matter, and we'll cover the specifics in interview.

You will:

• Own the end-to-end platform architecture: from bare-metal/hypervisor layer through networking, cloud, and orchestration infrastructure.
• Design and implement the on-prem virtualization layer (e.g. Proxmox or equivalent) supporting compute clusters, control-plane services, and developer/test environments.
• Design hybrid cloud architecture (primarily Azure) including compute bursting strategy, cost controls, and workload placement between on-prem and cloud.
• Architect network topology: subnet design, VLAN segmentation, firewall rules, DMZ boundaries, and secure ingress/egress between on-prem HPC/HTC resources, cloud environments, and external services.
• Design and implement identity, authentication, and authorization: RBAC models, service accounts, SSO/federation, least-privilege access policies across platform components.
• Own secrets management strategy (e.g. Vault, Azure Key Vault, or equivalent) and ensure secrets are never hard-coded or leaked into logs/artifacts.
• Build and maintain Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform) and configuration management (Ansible) to make environment provisioning repeatable, auditable, and version-controlled.
• Define and enforce security baselines: patching cadence, vulnerability scanning, network hardening, audit logging.
• Partner with the application development lead to define clean interfaces between infrastructure concerns (deployment, secrets, networking) and application logic (workflow/task design).
• Act as a technical mentor across the team on infrastructure and security topics — you are expected to unblock others quickly by applying established patterns, not by re-deriving them from scratch.
• Participate in incident response and capacity planning for production workloads.
• Evaluate and make build-vs-buy decisions for infrastructure tooling.

About you

Committed to making your customers, stakeholders and colleagues successful, you’re an excellent communicator, listener and collaborator who builds trusted partnerships by delivering what you say, when you say. You’re curious, solutions orientated and a world-class problem solver who constantly seeks opportunities to innovate and achieve the best possible outcome to the highest imaginable standard.

You will have:

• Extensive experience in infrastructure/platform engineering, with demonstrable ownership of production systems end-to-end.
• Deep hands-on experience with on-prem virtualization from bare metal (e.g. Proxmox, VMware, or similar hypervisor platforms) — not just cloud-only experience.
• Strong production experience with Azure (compute, networking, IAM, storage); familiarity with hybrid/multi-cloud patterns.
• Solid networking fundamentals: subnetting, VLANs, routing, firewall design, DMZ architecture, VPN/site-to-site connectivity.
• Practical experience designing and implementing RBAC, authentication/authorization systems (OAuth2/OIDC, SAML, service principals), and secrets management platforms (Vault, Key Vault, or similar).
• Strong Terraform experience (modules, state management, multi-environment patterns) and Ansible (or equivalent configuration management) for provisioning and configuration.
• Comfortable working in Linux-centric environments; strong shell scripting ability.
• Experience securing systems that bridge on-prem and cloud boundaries (e.g. HPC/HTC compute farms, hybrid data planes).
• Understanding of container runtimes (Docker and/or HPC/HTC-oriented alternatives like Apptainer/Singularity) and their networking/security implications.

You might also have:

• Experience with Kubernetes for cloud-burst or elastic compute scenarios.
• Familiarity with workflow orchestration tools (e.g. Prefect, Airflow, Dagster) — not required to design flows, but useful for understanding deployment/runtime needs.
• Exposure to high-performance/scientific/technical computing environments (HPC/HTC schedulers, license-managed software, compute farms).
• Experience with observability stacks (Prometheus/Grafana, ELK, or equivalent).
• Prior experience in a regulated or IP-sensitive industry where security posture is critical.

Who we are

Imagination is a UK-based company that creates silicon and software IP designed to give its customers an edge in competitive global technology markets. Its GPU and AI technologies enable outstanding power, performance, and area (PPA), fast time-to-market, and lower total cost of ownership. Products based on Imagination IP are used by billions of people across the globe in their smartphones, cars, homes, and workplaces.

We need your skills to help us continue to deliver technology that will impress the industry and our customers alike, ensuring that people everywhere can enjoy smarter and faster tech than ever before.

So come join us if you're wanting that something more

Bring your talent, curiosity and expertise and we’ll help you do the rest. You’ll be part of one of the world’s most exciting companies who are one of the leaders in semiconductor IP solutions.

As a part of our team, you can help us transform, innovate, and inspire the lives of millions through our technology.

Additional information

If you encounter accessibility barriers in the application process or if you have access needs and require support or adjustments to participate equitably in the recruitment process, please email [e-mail].

Advertised: 08 Oct 2026 GMT Daylight Time
Applications close: