Full job descriptionJob 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.