Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer | DV Cleared (Defence AI)

VIQU IT; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 129,000 - 185,000; Full time

Job summary

Morela is seeking a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer for a London-based contract role. You will own the technical relationship with defence and government customers, deploying and accrediting a GCP-native AI platform across diverse environments, from Kubernetes to air-gapped networks.

You will write production code when needed and engage senior stakeholders with a pragmatic, high-ownership delivery mindset. Requires active DV clearance and hands-on leadership.

Qualifications

• Active DV clearance required.
• Architected and scaled complex products from scratch; hands-on.
• Strong GCP expertise: Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, IAM, networking, Workload Identity Federation.
• Experience with Terraform, GitLab CI/CD, Docker and container orchestration.
• Deploying across Kubernetes, OpenShift, VMs, bare metal, on-premises and sovereign cloud.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical workshops, demos and discussions with senior MOD, engineering and security stakeholders.
• Own delivery end to end: requirements, planning, deployment, troubleshooting and handover.
• Adapt the platform's GCP architecture to customer infrastructure, including air-gapped environments.
• Integrate the platform with customer data sources, APIs and systems.
• Own test strategy, accreditation support and technical documentation for customers.

Skills

DV clearance

Hands-on architect

Technical leadership

Stakeholder engagement

Tools

Terraform

GitLab CI/CD

Docker

Kubernetes

OpenShift

Cloud Run

Cloud SQL

Job description

Morela is seeking a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer for a London-based contract role. You will own the technical relationship with defence and government customers, deploying and accrediting a GCP-native AI platform across diverse environments, from Kubernetes to air-gapped networks.

You will write production code when needed and engage senior stakeholders with a pragmatic, high-ownership delivery mindset. Requires active DV clearance and hands-on leadership.