About this role
Salary: £? - ? per year
Requirements: Proven experience as a Principal Engineer, Lead Engineer, Senior Staff Engineer, or equivalentStrong background in Cloud, Infrastructure, or Platform EngineeringDeep expertise in Kubernetes and container technologiesExperience with Kafka and event streaming platformsStrong knowledge of private cloud technologies and enterprise virtualisation platforms such as VMwareExcellent understanding of distributed systems, networking, scalability, and performance engineeringExperience with Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD toolsetsStrong understanding of security, governance, and operational readinessExperience operating within large-scale enterprise environmentsStrong technical leadership and decision-making skillsExcellent stakeholder engagement and communication abilitiesA passion for engineering excellence and platform modernisationThe ability to influence technical direction across complex environmentsA pragmatic approach to solving large-scale engineering challenges Responsibilities: Provide technical leadership across cloud and platform engineering initiativesDefine and drive engineering standards, best practices, reference architectures, and platform guardrailsAct as a senior technical authority, reviewing designs and ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, supportable, and cost-effectiveLead the design and evolution of platform capabilities spanning compute, storage, networking, orchestration, and platform servicesWork closely with Product Owners and Architects to translate strategic objectives into practical engineering solutionsDrive improvements in reliability, scalability, performance, and operational excellence across multiple environmentsChampion automation-first approaches through Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, and platform engineering best practicesInfluence platform roadmaps and engineering strategyLead architectural decisions relating to Kubernetes and container platformsDefine standards for cluster architecture, networking, multi-tenancy, security, and workload onboardingEstablish repeatable deployment patterns using GitOps, automation, and configuration managementDrive platform resilience, observability, and operational maturitySupport platform upgrades, governance, and lifecycle managementProvide leadership across Kafka and event-driven technology platformsEstablish standards for event streaming, resiliency, monitoring, and governanceSupport engineering teams in adopting event-driven architectures and microservices patternsDrive best practice around API design, domain boundaries, and service resilienceImprove developer productivity through self-service capabilities, reusable templates, and engineering standardsMentor engineering teams and promote engineering excellenceBuild strong relationships across Product, Architecture, Security, and Engineering functionsDrive alignment between technical strategy and delivery objectivesProduce clear technical designs and influence decision-making forumsSupport operational excellence, security-by-design, and risk management practices Technologies: APICI/CDCloudGitOpsSupportKafkaKubernetesSecurityVMwaremicroservicesDevOps More:
We are offering an exciting 3-6 month contract opportunity for an experienced Principal Engineer to join our large-scale enterprise cloud and platform engineering function in Sheffield, with three days onsite per week required. This role is PAYE via umbrella only and offers a rate of up to £700 per day. You will help shape platform strategy and drive the delivery of secure, resilient, and scalable cloud services across private cloud technologies, Kubernetes, container platforms, event streaming, and microservices enablement. You will work closely with Product Owners, Architects, Infrastructure Engineers, and engineering teams in a senior role focused on technical leadership, engineering excellence, and platform modernisation.
last updated 33 week of 2026