Lead AWS Platform Engineer - Must be comfortable with mentoring/management responsibilities
Hybrid - Leeds city centre (free parking)
Role Summary
The Lead Platform Engineer will provide strategic technical leadership for the cloud-native initiatives. You will establish architectural standards and operational practices to enable scalable SaaS delivery, driving developer experience through self-service platforms, GitOps workflows, and robust observability.
You will lead and mentor a team of engineers, balancing strategic planning with hands-on execution to ensure high reliability and security in data-sensitive environments.
Main Responsibilities
Leadership & Strategy
* Define and drive the vision, strategy, and roadmap for platform engineering.
* Mentor technical talent and foster a culture of innovation and collaboration.
* Manage team capacity, balancing new features with technical debt and operational excellence.
* Collaborate with stakeholders to drive organizational adoption of platform initiatives.
Technical Execution
* Architect self-service capabilities (e.g., Backstage) and GitOps workflows (e.g., ArgoCD).
* Own production SaaS reliability, managing multi-cluster Kubernetes environments and AWS infrastructure.
* Implement DORA and Core 4 metrics to drive continuous improvement.
* Establish standards for CI/CD, containerization, and security (RBAC, disaster recovery).
* Maintain the observability stack (Prometheus, Grafana) and define SLIs/SLOs.
Collaboration & Improvement
* Partner with Security and Product teams to ensure compliance and meet customer needs.
* Eliminate toil through automation and optimize infrastructure costs.
* Lead the platform \"Community of Practice\" and document key architectural decisions.
Skills and Knowledge
Essential
* Experience: 5+ years designing cloud infrastructure and owning production SaaS platforms.
* Orchestration: Expert-level Kubernetes (multi-cluster management and resource optimization).
* Deployment: Hands-on GitOps experience using ArgoCD and Helm.
* Tooling: Proficiency in IaC ($Terraform$, $CDK$, or $Ansible$) and observability platforms.
* Security: Understanding of security standards in high-value data environments.
* Soft Skills: Strong stakeholder management and ability to influence across teams.
Desired
* AWS or Kubernetes certifications.
* Experience implementing DORA/Core 4 metrics.
* TypeScript/React skills for portal customization.
Key Benefits
* Competitive Package
* Work-Life Balance: 34 days holiday (plus bank holidays).
* Perks: Generous pension, healthcare cashback, and more.