Principle Platform Engineer

Location: Chaucer

Principal Platform Engineer (AWS) £120,000 – £140,000 + benefits
Remote-first (UK) with occasional client-site travel

We're hiring for a brand-new Principal Platform Engineer role for one of our long standing clients and looking for a cool person who wants to shape, not just deliver, cloud platforms at scale.

The company design and build some of the most secure AWS environments in the UK, supporting national security, defence, and highly regulated public sector organisations.

This is a 60% hands-on / 40% hands-off role, ideal for a senior engineer who still loves being close to the tech, but also thrives on architecture ownership, stakeholder influence, and team leadership.

You’ll play a pivotal role in defining AWS platform strategy, leading delivery across complex programmes, and acting as a trusted technical voice for both clients and internal teams. If you’ve worked with AWS Landing Zones at scale, this is where you’ll do your best work. (but that's not essential)

What you’ll be doing
Own and evolve AWS platform architecture across complex, multi-account, highly secure environments

Design, implement and optimise AWS Landing Zones,

Act as a technical leader and escalation point across multiple projects and client engagements

Balance hands-on engineering with technical leadership, design authority and stakeholder management

Build and maintain Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, Cloud Formation and AWS CDK

Embed security-by-design, integrating services such as IAM, KMS, Guard Duty, Security Hub and Inspector

Design CI/CD pipelines enabling self-service, repeatable and auditable deployments

Partner closely with AWS, internal delivery teams, and senior client stakeholders

Mentor and lead engineers, raising the bar for engineering quality, documentation and best practice

Skills:

Essential

Significant hands-on experience designing and running AWS platforms at scale

Strong background in secure cloud architecture for regulated environments

Proven experience balancing technical delivery with leadership and stakeholder management

Infrastructure as Code expertise (Terraform / Cloud Formation / CDK)

Strong understanding of AWS networking, IAM, encryption and security patterns

Eligibility for SC clearance

Nice to have

AWS Landing Zone accelerator or framework experience

Kubernetes / EKS and container platforms

Observability tooling (Grafana, Prometheus, ELK, Open Telemetry)

Python, Go or similar for automation

Experience working directly with AWS on architecture or delivery

The nitty and gritty:
£120,000 – £140,000 salary depending on experience

Remote-first working, with meaningful but limited client travel

Opportunity to shape a new role with real autonomy and influence

Work on nationally critical, genuinely interesting projects

Collaborate with senior engineers, AWS specialists and industry leaders

25 days holiday + bank holidays

Up to 5% employer pension contribution