Platform Engineer (Junior to Mid-Level)
Permanent Full Time | Hybrid | Gateshead | £35-45,000
We're looking for a Platform Engineer to join our growing team at Vertu Motors Plc. You'll help build and maintain the infrastructure that powers engineering across our 190+ dealerships, including systems that serve 7,500+ colleagues and support a business with yearly revenue exceeding £4bn.
This is a chance to work on meaningful problems: enabling developer productivity at scale, improving system reliability, and architecting solutions that directly impact how we serve customers and run our business. You'll be part of a growing platform team supporting 6+ engineering squads (50+ developers), which means your work has real visibility and impact.
We're looking for someone who's technically curious and wants to grow into platform engineering. Maybe you've been doing DevOps or software development and want to specialise in infrastructure and developer tooling. You'll work with AWS, containers, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure as code, and learn from experienced engineers while solving real production challenges.
This role is hybrid. The successful candidate will be ideally based in the Northeast and will be working approximately three days per week at our head office in Gateshead. We are open to considering fully remote candidates for the right person, with the expectation that they would travel to our head office in Gateshead at least once a month.
What You'll Do
Your first 30 days will focus on getting familiar with our AWS environments, understanding how our teams work, and making small improvements to existing systems. By 90 days, you'll be contributing to infrastructure projects alongside the team; your work could include refining our ECS deployments, improving monitoring, or helping teams with architecture questions. At 6 months, you'll be comfortable working in various parts of our platform, collaborating with application teams to solve their infrastructure needs, and proposing improvements based on what you've learned.
This isn't a solo role. You'll pair with senior engineers, participate in architecture reviews, and help train development teams on tooling and best practices. We value psychological safety and collaborative problem-solving over individual heroics.
What We're Looking For
You'll need:
* Hands-on AWS experience, particularly with networking fundamentals (VPCs, DNS, load balancing)
* Comfort with Linux command line—troubleshooting issues, analysing logs, writing Bash scripts
* Experience with containers (we use ECS, but Docker or other orchestration tools work too)
* Basic SQL and relational database knowledge
* Some exposure to Infrastructure as Code (Terraform is our tool, but similar experience counts)
* CI/CD pipeline experience—building or maintaining them
* Coding ability in at least one language like TypeScript, Python, or Go
* Willingness to context-switch between different tech stacks and learn new tools
Bonus points for:
* DynamoDB or NoSQL data modelling experience
* Aurora PostgreSQL or RDS operational knowledge
* Serverless architectures (Lambda, event-driven patterns)
* Application modernisation projects (monolith breakdowns, containerisation efforts)
* Previous work supporting multiple engineering teams as an internal platform
The Reality
You'll be working within a high-volume, low-margin industry where operational efficiency matters. Our platform work directly enables the business because downtime affects real sales, real colleagues, real customers. You'll need to balance moving fast with building things that last.
We're a team that values learning and honest communication over perfection. You'll get things wrong sometimes, we all do. What matters is how quickly we learn, adapt, and support each other.
About Vertu Motors Plc.
We've been operating for 20 years under the same leadership team, which brings genuine organisational stability. We recently completed a major "One Vertu" transformation, consolidating multiple brands into a unified platform. Our engineering work focuses on three areas: serving customers who buy vehicles, empowering our colleagues to deliver excellent service, and driving business efficiency across our dealerships. We're in the business of buying and selling cars, parts, and time. Technology is how we do that better.
We are proud to be the Motor Retailer who invests more in our colleagues' personal development than any other. If you are successful, you can look forward to ongoing training opportunities that provide you with the right career path, career progression, and a range of benefits you would expect from an employer of choice, including:
* 25 days holiday rising with length of service, plus bank holidays
* Access to our online rewards platform, giving you cash back and discounts for multiple retailers
* Preferential Service Rates
* Colleague Purchase Scheme
* Share Incentive Scheme
* Pension
* Enhanced Maternity and Paternity
If your application is successful, we will need to complete employment checks prior to you starting with us. Your role will include verifying your recent employment, credit history, and a criminal record check.
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