Platform Engineer

The Key Support Services; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous holiday allowance

Flexible hours

Buying and selling holiday

Enhanced maternity pay

Free breakfast

Fruit

Drinks

Regular socials

Job summary

The Key is the country’s most trusted provider of knowledge and know-how to education leaders determined to make a difference. We provide authoritative, up-to-date sector intelligence, tools, services and resources that give leaders the knowledge to act.

The Platform Engineer designs, operates, and optimises the organisation’s cloud-based platform to guarantee high reliability, scalability, and performance.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated proficiency with Infrastructure as Code tooling, preferably Terraform.
• Experience designing and managing Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and GKE environments.
• Minimum 2 years creating and managing robust CI/CD platforms.
• Minimum 2 years using GitHub or equivalent version control.
• Interest in AI coding agents and advanced automation tooling.
• Strong written and verbal communication for technical and non-technical audiences.
• Highly conscientious, self-organised with cross-stakeholder coordination.
• Desirable: knowledge of ISO27001.
• Hands-on knowledge of MongoDB and PostgreSQL.
• Deep understanding of containerisation technologies.

Responsibilities

• Plan and deliver scalable cloud infrastructure upgrades using IaC.
• Optimize GKE and cloud environment for performance and resilience.
• Own monitoring, alerting, and observability; lead incident response.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines; improve developer experience.
• Automate manual tasks and integrate AI tooling into workflows.
• Enforce platform security practices and risk mitigation.
• Coordinate complex projects across local and remote teams.

Skills

Kubernetes

Google Cloud Platform

IaC

CI/CD

GitHub

AI tooling

Security best practices

Developer experience

Tools

Terraform

MongoDB

PostgreSQL

Job description

The company

The Key is the country’s most trusted provider of knowledge and know-how to education leaders determined to make a difference. We provide authoritative, up-to-the-minute sector intelligence, tools, services and resources that give leaders the knowledge to act.

The role

The Platform Engineer designs, operates, and continuously optimises the organisation’s cloud-based platform to guarantee high reliability, scalability, and performance. Acting as an operational anchor and developer experience champion, the role automates critical engineering processes, drives system security, and embeds cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) agentic coding workflows. By managing core cloud infrastructure and proactive observability, the position enables seamless software delivery and minimises operational downtime across test and production environments.Cloud Infrastructure & Architecture

• Engineer, plan, and deliver scalable cloud infrastructure upgrades and optimisations using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools.

• Continuously optimise the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and wider cloud environment to boost efficiency, performance, and overall system resilience.

• Incident Management & Observability

  • Own monitoring, alerting, and observability frameworks across production and test environments to proactively identify system defects.
  • Lead incident response investigations, execute technical resolutions, and implement post-incident fixes to permanently prevent issue recurrence.

• Developer Experience & CI/CD Support

  • Build, maintain, and optimise software delivery and CI/CD pipelines to streamline deployment workflows.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve complex operational issues for developers, actively seeking ways to enhance overall developer experience and efficiency.

• Automation & AI Tooling Integration

  • Automate manual, repetitive operational tasks to reduce technical debt and maximise organisational efficiency.
  • Leverage AI agentic coding tools daily for incident investigation and operational automation, extending internal agent capabilities to benefit the broader engineering department.

• Platform Security & Compliance

  • Enforce robust security practices across the platform to safeguard infrastructure in line with industry standards.
  • Foster a proactive culture of security awareness and risk mitigation within the engineering team.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration

  • Communicate platform changes, technical concepts, and updates clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Coordinate complex operational projects across local and remote teams with high conscientiousness and structured self-organisation.

Key success indicators

• Infrastructure availability and uptime across Google Cloud Platform services.
• Reduction in Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR) system incidents.
• Percentage of operational tasks automated and successfully integrated into AI agentic workflows.
• Measurable improvement in software delivery deployment frequency and CI/CD pipeline execution times.
• Developer satisfaction scores regarding internal platform reliability and developer tooling.

Required experience and profile

• Demonstrated proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tooling, preferably Terraform.
• Practical experience designing, operating, and managing Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) environments.
• Minimum of 2 years of hands-on experience in designing and managing robust CI/CD platforms.
• Minimum of 2 years of experience using GitHub or equivalent version control systems.
• Genuine enthusiasm for working with AI coding agents and leveraging advanced automation tooling.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills tailored for technical and non-technical audiences.
• High level of conscientiousness, self-organisation, and ability to coordinate multi-stakeholder projects locally and remotely.
  Desirable
• Working knowledge of and exposure to the ISO27001 information security standard.
• Hands-on knowledge of database platforms such as MongoDB and PostgreSQL.
• Deep technical understanding of containerisation technologies.

We place huge importance on caring for and developing our people. If you join us you can expect a good work-life balance and the training and support you need to succeed in your role and continue to progress. We are a socially conscious company, but one that also likes to have fun. We offer a generous holiday allowance, flexible hours, buying and selling holiday, enhanced maternity pay, free breakfast, fruit, and drinks, regular socials and much more.

• generous holiday allowance
• flexible hours
• buying and selling holiday
• enhanced maternity pay
• free breakfast
• fruit
• drinks
• regular socials
• and much more