Senior Platform Engineer: AI-Driven Cloud & Kubernetes

Hackajob Ltd; Leeds; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Hackajob Ltd in Leeds seeks a senior Platform Engineer to shape a multi-year technical roadmap for a scalable, secure platform. You’ll mentor engineers, collaborate with product, security and business stakeholders, and define standards for responsible AI-enabled development and governance.

You’ll own production reliability, drive architectural standards, optimise cloud costs, and accelerate delivery with GitOps, CI/CD, observability tooling, and modern service meshes.

Qualifications

• Formal training or certification (e.g., BSc, CKAD, Google Associate Cloud Engineer, or AWS Certified Solutions Architect).
• Expert-level administration of a major cloud platform (GCP, AWS, or Azure).
• Mastery of Kubernetes administration and operator patterns.
• Strong cloud networking expertise across the OSI networking model.
• Strong proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) methodologies.
• Proven, hands-on experience in system design, development, testing, and operational stability.
• Advanced proficiency in modern language(s) (e.g., Go, Java, Kotlin).
• Demonstrated technical leadership and cross-team collaboration.
• Hands-on Security Engineering experience.
• Demonstrated experience designing and leading adoption of agentic AI-enabled development practices across teams, including setting standards for human-in-the-loop validation, auditability/traceability of changes, and secure handling of sensitive data.
• Strong understanding of responsible AI use and control expectations in engineering workflows, including security/resiliency implications, data sensitivity, and risk-based governance; ability to influence senior technical leaders on safe scaling patterns and reuse.
• Advanced knowledge of CI/CD, application resiliency, and secure delivery (e.g., SLSA framework and GitOps).
• Deep experience with Observability and Monitoring tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, OTEL).
• Expertise in performance optimisation of distributed systems (e.g., caching, network latency).
• Practical experience with Service Mesh technologies (e.g., Istio, Linkerd, Cillium).
• Demonstrated success in Mentorship and Coaching both senior and junior engineers.
• Proven ability in Technical Roadmapping and defining long-term platform strategy.
• Stakeholder management and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Work with senior stakeholders to define and drive the multi-year technical roadmap and long-term architectural strategy for platform engineering, ensuring competitive advantage and scalability.
• Mentor and coach senior engineers across teams, elevating the technical bar and championing Software Engineering Communities of Practice.
• Serve as the key technical liaison for product, business, and security stakeholders, translating technical decisions into business impact.
• Lead the design and delivery of composable, secure, and scalable infrastructure systems and capabilities.
• Own the operational stability of production systems, automating recurring issues and establishing DORA/SLIs/SLOs metrics for continuous improvement.
• Drive architectural standards and best practices across the organisation, leading technical evaluations with internal and external partners.
• Champion FinOps principles to drive cloud cost optimisation and guide performance tuning of distributed systems.
• Architect and govern agentic AI-enabled engineering workflows using enterprise-authorized tools within the work environment to improve delivery speed, code quality, and operational outcomes at scale.
• Define guardrails for validation, security, resiliency, and reuse across teams.
• Apply knowledge of tools within the Software Development Life Cycle toolchain, including enterprise-authorized AI-assisted development and automation capabilities, to improve the value realized by automation at scale.

Skills

Kubernetes

IaC

CI/CD

Security

Observability

Performance tuning

AI security & governance

Leadership

Mentorship

Stakeholder management

Cloud architecture

Education

BSc or higher in a relevant field

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

Kubernetes

Istio

Linkerd

Cilium

Prometheus

Grafana

OTEL

GitOps

Job description

Hackajob Ltd in Leeds seeks a senior Platform Engineer to shape a multi-year technical roadmap for a scalable, secure platform. You’ll mentor engineers, collaborate with product, security and business stakeholders, and define standards for responsible AI-enabled development and governance.

You’ll own production reliability, drive architectural standards, optimise cloud costs, and accelerate delivery with GitOps, CI/CD, observability tooling, and modern service meshes.