Senior Cloud Platform Engineer & Delivery Lead in Milton Keynes

This role is part of the DPG Platform Engineering Team, responsible for driving the adoption and consumption of cloud infrastructure. The role conducts the architecture, build and migration of new and legacy platforms to a Cloud and DevOps practice and facilitates the consumption of cloud services across the business. Reporting to the Head of Cloud Engineering, the role contributes to the IT and Platform Engineering Road Map and champions the use of cloud services. The role focuses on improving stability, security, and availability of the cloud platform.

Key Responsibilities/Job Tasks

• Cloud Platform Delivery and Enablement: Provide line management, coaching, and development for the Platform Services team. Build a high‑performing, accountable engineering team with clear ownership and standards. Set direction, priorities, and ways of working for the team. Manage workload, capacity, and on‑call or support responsibilities where required.
• Infrastructure Delivery: Own the design and build of on‑premise infrastructure across data centres, offices, and supply chain environments. Lead the infrastructure workstream for project implementations, from design through to handover. Ensure solutions are supportable, secure, and aligned to architectural standards. Act as the escalation point for complex technical issues and major incidents.
• Core Technology Ownership: Servers, storage, and virtualisation platforms. Networking, firewalls, and connectivity within the data centre and wider estate. Dedicated hosting environments and associated third‑party services. Infrastructure monitoring, patching, resilience, and lifecycle management.
• Project Coordination: Plan and coordinate infrastructure delivery across multiple concurrent projects. Work closely with product, application, and business teams to define infrastructure requirements. Manage dependencies, risks, and delivery timelines for the Platform Services team. Ensure clear documentation and operational readiness before go‑live.
• Operational Accountability: Ensure platform stability, availability, and performance. Drive good incident, problem, and change management practices. Reduce repeat issues through root cause analysis and technical improvement. Maintain security, compliance, and audit requirements within infrastructure environments.
• Stakeholder and Vendor Management: Act as the primary infrastructure point of contact for internal stakeholders. Manage key infrastructure vendors and service providers. Ensure third parties meet contractual, SLA, and security obligations.

Skills & Job Requirements

• Strategic Responsibility: The role holds accountability for inputting into functional strategy, ensuring delivery activity is aligned with broader business goals, technology roadmaps, and operational campaigns. It contributes to strategic planning by translating high‑level objectives into actionable delivery streams, ensuring technology deployments support customer and enterprise outcomes.
• Problem Solving: The role requires frequent resolution of complex issues through evaluation of multiple data sources, stakeholder inputs, and delivery constraints. It applies structured analysis, precedent awareness, and situational judgement to develop practical solutions that minimise disruption and maintain continuity, often within dynamic and changing environments.
• Decision Making: The role makes decisions within broad operational and business guidelines, frequently in areas where limited precedent or policy exists. It exercises autonomy in determining delivery prioritisation, resource allocation, and risk mitigation, with a direct impact on release integrity, delivery timelines, and stakeholder satisfaction.
• Communication: Exceptional communication skills are required to influence, guide, and align cross‑functional teams and stakeholders. The role demands clarity in conveying complex information to both technical and non‑technical audiences, effective negotiation of competing priorities, and proactive engagement across senior and delivery‑facing groups.
• Innovation: The role actively contributes to change by identifying and implementing enhancements to delivery processes, governance practices, and performance oversight. It champions continuous improvement through structured analysis, routinely introducing optimisations that improve efficiency, reduce delivery risks, and support scalable, repeatable delivery models.

Professional Qualifications

• Industry certifications in core infrastructure technologies such as VMware VCP, Microsoft Azure or Windows Server, Cisco CCNA/CCNP, or equivalent vendor qualifications.
• ITIL Foundation or Intermediate Certificate covering incident, problem, change, and operational lifecycle management.
• Relevant certifications in data centre, networking, virtualisation, or security platforms (e.g. Fortinet NSE, Nutanix, Dell/EMC, Cisco Meraki).
• Degree in Computer Science, Infrastructure Engineering, Information Technology or equivalent professional experience.
• Desirable: accreditation in automation, scripting, or infrastructure‑as‑code tooling (e.g. Terraform, PowerShell).

Knowledge

• Deep understanding of on‑premise infrastructure including compute, storage, virtualisation, networking, firewalls, and data centre operations.
• Strong working knowledge of VMware, Windows Server, Active Directory, and core directory, DNS, DHCP and identity services.
• Familiarity with enterprise networking concepts including routing, switching, secure connectivity, and load balancing.
• Awareness of infrastructure lifecycle management, patching, resilience patterns, and capacity planning.
• Understanding of monitoring platforms, operational telemetry, and performance baselining for core infrastructure.
• Knowledge of incident, problem, change, and operational compliance frameworks (ITIL or equivalent).
• Familiarity with hardware vendors and platform ecosystems such as Dell/EMC, HPE, Cisco, Fortinet, Nutanix, or similar.
• Understanding of security principles relevant to infrastructure, including segmentation, privileged access, and hardening standards.
• Experience working within complex hybrid environments and enterprise estates with multiple dependent systems.

Skills/Ability

• Proven leadership and line management of infrastructure engineers across multiple concurrent workstreams.
• Ability to design, plan, and deliver infrastructure solutions across data centres, offices, and supply chain environments.
• Strong capability in diagnosing complex infrastructure faults across servers, networks, storage, and virtualisation stacks.
• Skilled in coordinating technical changes, major upgrades, and platform transitions with minimal operational impact.
• Competent in evaluating risks, dependencies, and capacity constraints across critical infrastructure services.
• Ability to influence technical direction and set engineering standards for build quality, resilience, and operational readiness.
• Comfortable engaging with senior stakeholders on stability, risk, and major incident matters.
• Experienced in vendor management, including contract performance, SLAs, and support escalations.
• Able to operate effectively in fast‑paced, high‑availability environments with strict uptime expectations.
• Strong documentation discipline covering design, platform configuration, operational processes, and handover material.