Department
Engineering
Location
Bristol, UK
Description
We’re building the UK's next generation engineering powerhouse, providing critical technology that strengthens national security and resilience. At Rowden, we design and integrate advanced systems that sense, connect, and protect data in challenging environments where quick decisions are vital. Our solutions use intelligent automation to enhance speed and efficiency and are built to be reliable and straightforward for critical operations in remote or high-pressure settings.
Headquartered in Bristol (UK), we combine modern engineering methods with cutting‑edge commercial technology to create adaptable, mission‑critical systems. We focus on solving tough challenges that others overlook, ensuring our customers can operate effectively in an ever‑changing world.
Technical Leadership in Infrastructure & Applications
As part of this journey, we are scaling our Infrastructure & Applications capability. This function builds intelligent, resilient, and private solutions from the cloud to the far edge, ensuring robust and secure operations for our clients.
As a Principal Infrastructure Engineer, you will act as a senior technical authority across Rowden’s portfolio of projects, products, tools, and systems – including those relied upon by hundreds of deployed users and critical internal capabilities. You will collaborate closely with engineers, delivery teams, and customers, tackling complex technology challenges in demanding environments.
This role is hands‑on, fast‑paced, and impact‑driven. You will provide technical leadership through architectural decision‑making, system design, and deep engineering expertise, guiding teams through uncertainty and enabling the delivery of robust, mission‑focused solutions. For the right person, this is an exceptional opportunity to shape infrastructure platforms and engineering standards in a growing, high‑trust organisation.
You will bring broad, applicable knowledge across domains including workload virtualization, cloud infrastructure, Linux operating systems, advanced networking concepts, and hyper‑converged infrastructure (HCI). Experience with high‑availability systems, fault‑tolerant architectures, and software‑defined networking (e.g. SD‑WAN) is highly valuable. Strong troubleshooting skills, clear communication with technical and non‑technical stakeholders, and the ability to decompose complex systems into manageable technical workstreams are essential.
While this role offers hybrid working options, it requires a minimum of three days per week on‑site at our Bristol HQ, with occasional travel to customer sites. Candidates must be willing to obtain UK National Security Vetting clearance, with SC required and DV desirable.
More information about security clearance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels
Key areas of responsibility
* Owning and assuring infrastructure architecture and design, ensuring privacy, security, compliance, high availability, performance, and resilience across all infrastructure capabilities.
* Scoping and shaping complex infrastructure initiatives, providing technical leadership during context alignment, architectural decision‑making, and execution.
* Acting as a key technical decision‑maker, balancing trade‑offs, managing risk, and ensuring long‑term maintainability and platform health across interconnected systems.
* Designing, developing, and deploying infrastructure components such as networks, virtual machines, containers, and orchestration workflows.
* Producing high‑quality system diagrams, documentation, and design artefacts.
* Maintaining and optimising infrastructure platforms, including configuration management, system upgrades, and the implementation of infrastructure‑as‑code (IaC) practices.
* Implementing and evolving monitoring, logging, and alerting capabilities to provide real‑time system insight.
* Developing and standardising secure build processes for end‑user devices, ensuring consistent integration with public, private, and hybrid cloud infrastructure.
* Championing modern Agile and DevOps practices, influencing ways of working across teams.
* Mentoring and coaching engineers across the organisation.
Key skills, experience and behaviours
* A degree or equivalent experience in computer science, IT, or a related discipline.
* Proven ability to provide technical leadership and influence engineering direction.
* Extensive experience as an infrastructure engineer with strong understanding of networking, operating systems, cloud platforms and virtualisation technologies.
* Experience with scripting and automation (e.g. Python, Bash) and tools such as Ansible, Terraform, or similar.
* Demonstrated experience adopting and promoting Agile and DevOps practices.
* Strong ability to decompose complex systems into clear technical workstreams.
* Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
Highly desirable experience
* Experience delivering complex, connected systems in regulated sectors such as defence, national security, telecommunications, financial services, or automotive.
* Designing, deploying, and supporting solutions at the far edge in denied, disrupted, intermittent, or lossy communication environments.
* Building and maintaining secure application deployments on AWS, Azure, or GCloud.
* Background experience in IT support or operational environments.
Key attributes
* Problem‑solver: Able to troubleshoot and resolve complex issues pragmatically and efficiently.
* Systems thinker: Comfortable reasoning about large‑scale, interconnected systems.
* Detail‑oriented: Maintains high standards and adherence to best practices.
* Adaptable and self‑motivated: Learns quickly and continuously develops technical capability.
* Technical mentor: Develops engineers through guidance, review, and example.
* Collaborative: Works effectively across disciplines, sharing knowledge openly.
* Continuous improvement mindset: Proactively identifies opportunities to improve systems, processes, and ways of working.
* Agile mindset: Applies Agile principles pragmatically, facilitating alignment, prioritisation, and collaboration.
Working at Rowden
We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are!
We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid‑working model, with an average three days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part‑time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants.
Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible.
Finally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!
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