Senior On Premise Platform Engineer

On-Prem & Leased Data-Centre Platform Ownership

• Design and build on-premise infrastructure hosted in leased UK data centres
• Architect and operate bare-metal Kubernetes clusters (control plane + workers)
• Own compute, networking, storage, Linux OS, and platform architecture
• Design platforms capable of 99.99% availability
• Plan and execute capacity management, failover, and disaster recovery
• Operate GPU-enabled infrastructure for AI inference and training
• Build systems suitable for NHS 999 and emergency communications workloads

Kubernetes, CI/CD & Automation (GitLab)

• Design and maintain GitLab CI/CD pipelines (build, test, deploy)
• Automate:
• Infrastructure provisioning (Terraform / IaC)
• Kubernetes deployments
• AI model and application releases
• Implement GitOps workflows
• Own day-2 operations, including upgrades, patching, and rollbacks
• Minimise deployment risk in safety-critical environments

Real-Time Streaming & Telecoms Systems

• Build and operate Kafka-based streaming platforms
• Support sub-second latency event processing
• Design for traffic spikes, back-pressure, and failure scenarios
• Ensure predictable behaviour under 999 call surges
• Optimise systems for latency, throughput, and resilience

MLOps & AI Platform Infrastructure

• Operate production AI inference platforms (KServe, Seldon, Triton, or similar)
• Enable GPU scheduling, isolation, and concurrency controls
• Support model versioning, retraining pipelines, and lifecycle management
• Implement:
• Canary releases
• Versioned deployments
• Safe rollback paths
• Work closely with AI engineers, retaining platform ownership

Reliability, Security & NHS Compliance

• Build observability using Prometheus, Grafana, and centralised logging
• Define and monitor SLIs, SLOs, latency, uptime, and error budgets
• Lead incident response and root-cause analysis
• Implement least-privilege access, secrets management, and audit controls
• Harden platforms for NHS, telecoms, and regulated environments

Do you have experience in Terraform?, We are seeking a Principal Platform Engineer with 7+ years of hands-on experience designing, building, and operating on-premise, bare-metal platforms in leased data-centre environments., Candidates must meet most of the following:

• 7+ years hands-on platform / infrastructure engineering experience
• Proven experience building on-prem or private-cloud platforms
• Experience operating leased data-centre infrastructure
• Bare-metal Kubernetes (self-managed, not EKS / AKS / GKE)
• Strong Linux, networking, and storage fundamentals
• GitLab CI/CD pipeline design and ownership
• Experience with telecommunications or NHS environments
• Ownership of production systems with strict uptime requirements

Strongly Preferred

• NHS 999, emergency services, or healthcare platforms
• Telecommunications background (BT, Vodafone, carrier networks)
• Kafka and real-time streaming in production
• GPU-based AI inference workloads
• Terraform and Infrastructure as Code
• Experience in regulated, mission-critical environments

What This Role Is Not

• Cloud-only DevOps
• Data science or ML research
• Junior or mid-level engineering
• Platform consumption or inherited systems, If you have 7+ years of experience delivering telecoms-grade or NHS-grade platforms, and are comfortable owning systems where failure is not an option, we want to hear from you., * hands-on platform engineering, including building on-prem: 7 years (required)

Job Types: Part-time, Permanent, Temporary, Fixed term contract, Temp to perm, Zero hours contract, Volunteer, Internship Contract length: 12-18 months

Pay: £48,973.65-£100,679.17 per year

Expected hours: 10 - 20 per week

Benefits:

• Casual dress
• Discounted or free food
• Flexitime
• Free parking
• On-site parking
• Referral programme
• UK visa sponsorship
• Work from home