Senior Platform Engineer

Ellison Institute of Technology Oxford; Oxford; Hybrid; GBP 75,000 - 115,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary + travel allowance

Private Medical Insurance

Pension scheme

Job summary

The Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) is seeking a Senior Cloud Platform Engineer to join the SciComp team in Oxford. You will build and operate our cloud foundation, with secure, scalable, self-service guardrails to accelerate scientific experimentation.

You will collaborate with Research and Data teams to deploy structured pipelines, governance controls, and robust observability. Hybrid work pattern 3 days in Oxford/London offices, with relocation support considered.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in platform engineering with architecting and automating operational processes.
• Proactive attitude and passion for introducing and automating operational structure.
• Expertise with at least one major cloud provider (OCI, AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Proficiency with Terraform for large-scale infrastructure provisioning.
• Comfortable with operating and managing large-scale, resilient Kubernetes clusters.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and operate our cloud platform, moving infrastructure beyond the initial setup to deliver resilient compute, network, and storage, including full-sized GPU clusters.
• Drive the implementation of highly structured, auditable delivery pipelines (CI/CD/GitOps) using to enforce automated, repeatable infrastructure changes.
• Design and deploy automated governance and security controls using Policy-as-Code (specifically Kyverno and YAML) to ensure strong isolation, protect data, and meet internal audit standards.
• Establish the foundational monitoring, alerting, and telemetry framework required for robust operations, defining clear SLOs, and setting the course for future SRE work.
• Partner with Research and Data teams to build self-service capabilities that efficiently support diverse workloads, from Python notebooks to distributed clusters.

Skills

Platform engineering

Automation

Cloud providers

Terraform

Kubernetes

Programming (Python/Go/Java)

Tools

Kyverno

Policy-as-Code tooling

Job description

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we're on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, policy makers, and entrepreneurs to tackle humanity's greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you'll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society. Explore more at www.eit.org

Your Role:

Join our SciComp team to build the cloud and compute foundation that enables scientific breakthroughs. Deliver reliable, secure platforms and self-service guardrails that accelerate experimentation and turn ideas into results - faster, at scale, and with confidence.

Your Responsibilities:

• Architect, build, and operate our cloud platform, moving infrastructure beyond the initial setup to deliver resilient compute, network, and storage, including full-sized GPU clusters
• Drive the implementation of highly structured, auditable delivery pipelines (CI/CD/GitOps) using to enforce automated, repeatable infrastructure changes
• Design and deploy automated governance and security controls using Policy-as-Code (specifically Kyverno and YAML) to ensure strong isolation, protect data, and meet internal audit standards
• Establish the foundational monitoring, alerting, and telemetry framework required for robust operations, defining clear SLOs, and setting the course for future SRE work
• Partner with Research and Data teams to build self-service capabilities that efficiently support diverse workloads, from Python notebooks to distributed clusters

Requirements

Essential Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• Proven experience platform engineering, with a demonstrable track record of architecting and automating operational processes
• A highly proactive attitude and a passion for introducing and automating operational structure
• Expertise with at least one major cloud provider (OCI, AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Proficiency with Terraform for declarative, large-scale infrastructure provisioning
• Comfortable with operating and managing large-scale, resilient Kubernetes clusters
• Proficiency in at least one major language for system-level tools (e.g. Python, Go, or Java) with some scripting experience

Desirable Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• Familiarity with modern Policy-as-Code tooling
• A passion for introducing and automating operational rigour and structure
• Experience supporting ML and Data Engineering workloads

Benefits

We offer the following salary and benefits:

• Competitive salary (dependent on experience) + travel allowance + bonus
• Enhanced holiday. Our annual leave allowance is 25 days plus 8 bank holidays and an additional 3 days between Christmas and New Year. You will also have the opportunity to purchase an additional 5 days annual leave in January and July.
• Pension - Employer contribution 7.5%, minimum employee contribution 5%
• Life Assurance.
• Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance as standard for you, your partner and any dependents. Including hospital Cash Plan
• Employee discounts
• Electric car scheme
• Nursery Salary Sacrifice scheme
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Family Planning
• Neurodiversity support including advise and assessments
• Coaching & Therapy services

Working together - what it involves:

You must have the right to work permanently in the UK with a willingness to travel as necessary. In certain cases, we can consider sponsorship, and this will be assessed on a case-by‑case basis.

You will live in, or within easy commuting distance of, Oxford/London (or be willing to relocate).

The SciComp team work to a hybrid working pattern of 3 days in the office, 2x in our Oxford Office and 1x in our London office. You must be able to commit to this should you be successfully appointed.