Principal Hardware Engineer

Senior, hands-on role responsible for the physical delivery and lifecycle management of infrastructure across data centres, build labs, and office environments.

This position combines deep technical expertise with on-site leadership, risk ownership, and accountability for engineering standards in critical environments.

What you'll be doing

• Leading physical build, installation, relocation, and decommissioning of servers, storage, and network hardware
• Owning rack layouts, structured cabling, patching, labelling, and cable management standards
• Coordinating power, cooling, and space planning with facilities and design teams
• Producing and maintaining RAMS and operating within formal Change Management processes
• Identifying operational risks and enforcing health and safety standards
• Acting as senior technical authority and escalation point for physical infrastructure
• Mentoring field engineers and allocating work based on capability and project needs
• Supporting data centre migrations, expansions, and refresh programmes

• 5+ years' experience in data centre operations or infrastructure engineering
• Strong knowledge of compute, storage, and networking hardware
• Solid understanding of data centre best practice
• Experience working to RAMS in critical environments
• Structured cabling knowledge (Cat6/6a, OM3/OM4, fibre)
• Working knowledge of power distribution, PDUs, and load balancing
• Proven experience operating as a senior or lead engineer

Practical requirements

• Clean manual driving licence and valid passport
• Able to pass BS7858 vetting
• Eligible for UK SC clearance (5 years UK residency)
• Willing to travel and work out of hours when required