Platform Engineering Lead

Job Title: Platform Engineering Lead / Platform Architect

Location: London, UK

Type: Permanent / FTE

Mode: Hybrid - 4 days onsite (mandatory)

Role Overview:

We are seeking an experienced Platform Engineering Lead / Platform Architect to lead the go-live, production readiness, and ongoing operation of a modern banking platform built on AWS and Kubernetes.

The role combines hands-on platform engineering, technical leadership, architecture governance, security, and production operations. The successful candidate will lead a small platform engineering team, establish engineering standards, ensure platform reliability and security, and collaborate with central engineering teams, security stakeholders, and third-party technology vendors.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and mentor a small Platform Engineering team, managing priorities, reviewing technical designs and pull requests, and supporting recruitment and onboarding.
• Own platform go-live and production readiness, including disaster recovery testing, penetration testing, and vulnerability remediation.
• Manage and improve AWS, Amazon EKS, Kubernetes, Terraform, and GitOps environments.
• Establish platform reliability practices, operational runbooks, incident response procedures, and continuous improvement standards.
• Manage secure vendor connectivity, including private integrations, mTLS, PKI, certificate lifecycle, identity, and network security.
• Define and document Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) and present technical decisions to architecture review boards and governance stakeholders.
• Establish secure, auditable CI/CD pipelines, deployment promotion standards, and release gates in collaboration with central engineering teams.
• Manage engineering backlogs, delivery reporting, cost estimates, and risk identification using Jira.
• Support delivery partners with onboarding new services onto the platform while ensuring compliance with architecture, security, and operational standards.
• Encourage the adoption of AI-assisted engineering tools to improve developer productivity and engineering workflows.

Must Have:

• Strong hands-on experience with AWS, Kubernetes, and Amazon EKS in enterprise or production environments.
• Expertise in Terraform, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), GitOps, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Proven experience as a Platform Engineering Lead, Platform Architect, or Senior Platform Engineer with technical leadership responsibilities.
• Strong knowledge of PKI, mTLS, OAuth 2.0, OIDC, certificate management, and identity integration.
• Understanding of network security, private connectivity, and edge security.
• Experience managing production platforms, including production readiness, disaster recovery, incident management, and vulnerability remediation.
• Experience preparing Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) and presenting decisions to architecture or governance boards.
• Experience implementing auditable pipelines, security controls, release gates, and engineering standards in regulated environments.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, including collaboration with security teams, architects, vendors, and delivery partners.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted software engineering and developer productivity tools.
• Willingness to work onsite in London four days per week.

Good to Have:

• Experience in Banking, Financial Services, or Payments.
• Experience with SaaS banking platforms and third-party banking technology vendors.
• Knowledge of message brokers, messaging platforms, and event-driven architectures.
• Experience with observability and monitoring tools covering metrics, logs, and distributed tracing.
• Exposure to Policy as Code, automated compliance, and platform security controls.
• Experience using AI-assisted coding, code review, and engineering workflow automation tools.