Platform Engineer (Contract)
📍 Canary Wharf, London (Hybrid – 2 days onsite)
💼 Initial 6-month contract (likely to extend)
💰 £650 per day
🏦 Financial services experience preferred
Overview
A leading, PE-backed technology platform is undergoing a large-scale 12-month transformation programme to modernise its architecture and engineering capabilities.
We are looking for a Platform Engineer to play a key role in building the foundational components that will enable this transformation. You will work closely with architecture leadership to deliver scalable, production-ready platform solutions and accelerate engineering delivery.
Role Purpose
* Build core platform capabilities aligned to the target architecture
* Deliver working reference implementations to guide engineering teams
* Accelerate delivery by unblocking critical platform dependencies
Key Responsibilities
🔹 Platform Infrastructure
* Design and implement API gateway architecture (e.g. Kong or equivalent)
* Build observability and health monitoring capabilities (progressive maturity)
* Develop environment standardisation and templating
* Standardise CI/CD pipelines and deployment patterns
🔹 Architectural Enablement
* Implement event-driven architecture using Kafka
* Build authentication and authorisation patterns (e.g. Keycloak or similar)
* Develop reference implementations for architectural standards
* Support multi-region / active-active architecture design
🔹 Delivery Acceleration
* Execute platform engineering backlog aligned to architectural priorities
* Build shared services and environments to unblock product teams
* Demonstrate best practices through working code, not documentation
Required Skills
Essential
* 5+ years’ experience in platform or infrastructure engineering
* Strong experience with:
* Kafka (messaging design and implementation)
* API gateways (Kong or equivalent)
* Kubernetes / containerised environments
* Private cloud or on-prem infrastructure
* CI/CD pipeline design and implementation
* Infrastructure as Code (e.g. Terraform)
Strongly Preferred
* AWS (as a secondary cloud platform)
* Identity and access tools (e.g. Keycloak or similar)
* Experience within product-led or SaaS transformation programmes
* Familiarity with Spring Boot ecosystems
* Experience with multi-region / active-active architectures
Nice to Have
* Experience within financial or investment services
* Exposure to document generation or structured data platforms