At a Glance
- Tasks: Design and maintain cloud infrastructure, ensuring seamless product delivery.
- Company: Join a fast-growing tech startup revolutionising critical industries with AI-powered solutions.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, share options, private healthcare, and flexible hybrid working.
- Other info: Collaborate with a talented team and enjoy modern AI-assisted tools.
- Why this job: Make a real impact by solving complex challenges in essential industries.
- Qualifications: Proficient in coding, with strong software engineering fundamentals and a security-first mindset.
The predicted salary is between 60000 - 80000 £ per year.
We live in a world that runs on physical industries like energy, logistics, manufacturing. These sectors are essential to our economy and daily lives, yet they are held back by inefficiencies, fragile legacy systems, and decades-old ways of working. This is not just a business problem; it is a societal one. When grids fail, supply chains stall, or factories falter, entire economies are disrupted. These companies face unique, complex challenges that typical software was never designed to solve. Cogna was founded to change this. Our mission is to give critical industries their own AI-powered Software Factory: a way to build and deploy bespoke digital tools that solve pressing operational challenges. Since our launch in May 2023, we’ve seen incredible customer traction and revenue growth. We’re backed by leading VCs, including Notion Capital and Hoxton Ventures, and we’re building a world-class team to take on one of the most important challenges of our time. Tackling challenges at this scale takes people who are curious, adaptable, and motivated by impact. If our mission resonates with you, we encourage you to apply, even if your experience doesn’t match every requirement. We are committed to building a diverse team that reflects the industries and societies we serve.
Overview
We’re hiring a Platform Engineer to help design, build, and maintain the foundation our teams rely on every day. You’ll join our Platform team, which supports security, core infrastructure, and DevX across Cogna. Your focus will be shaping the internal platform and cloud architecture that powers all engineering teams and underpins our product. We treat the platform as an internal product: defining APIs, abstractions, and guardrails that let teams ship quickly and safely. This role is ideal for someone who thrives on solving platform-wide challenges, enjoys working cross‑functionally, and is passionate about clean, resilient cloud infrastructure.
What you’ll do
- Design and evolve our cloud infrastructure and internal platform (primarily Azure/Kubernetes-based), including service-to-service communication and workflow orchestration layers (e.g. gRPC, Temporal, Dagster) that power product delivery.
- Make architectural decisions that shape how Cogna builds and operates software.
- Work within and contribute to our Go/Python/TypeScript codebase.
- Own and evolve our build, infrastructure-as-code, and delivery systems (e.g. Bazel, Terraform, CI/CD), optimising for scalability, hermeticity, and developer velocity.
- Implement and own security controls, identity and access management systems, and network configuration policies across our Kubernetes environments.
- Improve and drive observability by implementing logging, tracing, and alerting systems (e.g. Datadog).
- Partner with internal teams to improve resilience, automate toil, and reduce lead time to deployment.
- Drive root cause analysis and reliability improvements from incidents.
What we’re looking for
- Proficient in writing maintainable, testable, and scalable code in real-world, production environments. Language fluency in Python, Typescript, or Go is a plus, but strong engineers with deep experience in comparable languages are welcome.
- Strong foundational software engineering skills: Solid grasp of computer science fundamentals such as data structures, concurrency, time/space complexity and performance.
- Systems-level thinking: Able to reason about distributed systems under failure, scale, and load and design resilient abstractions accordingly. Familiar with networks, operating systems, compilers, storage systems, or distributed services.
- Infrastructure as Code and automation: Experience with tools like Terraform, Pulumi, or equivalent for managing cloud-native infrastructure declaratively and repeatably.
- Deep operational experience with PostgreSQL in production — including performance tuning, schema evolution, multi-tenant design, and reliability under load.
- Security-first mindset: Deep appreciation for secure-by-default design. Familiar with principles like least privilege, secrets management, threat modeling, and how to embed security controls into infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Comfortable partnering with other engineers, product managers, sales, marketing, IT and support to define and implement platform capabilities that meet shared goals.
- AI assisted development: Excited about using AI-assisted development tools and interested in integrating AI into engineering workflows and platform capabilities.
What we offer
- Work alongside a high-calibre team with strong engineering standards and real ownership.
- Full access to modern AI-assisted engineering tools and freedom to experiment.
- Competitive salary and share option plan.
- 25 days annual leave, plus public holidays.
- Excellent pension scheme, company contribution fixed at 7.5%.
- Private healthcare, including family cover and pre-existing conditions.
- Flexible hybrid working with 2 days per fortnight in our Chancery Lane office.
- Regular social events and offsites.
- Access to a gym and fitness classes in our office building.
Platform Engineer employer: Cogna Ltd
Cogna is an exceptional employer for those passionate about transforming critical industries through innovative technology. With a commitment to diversity and a culture that fosters curiosity and adaptability, employees enjoy competitive salaries, generous leave, and access to modern AI-assisted tools. The opportunity for professional growth is enhanced by a collaborative environment where engineers can take ownership of their work while contributing to meaningful societal challenges.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Platform Engineer
✨Tip Number 1
Network like a pro! Reach out to people in the industry, attend meetups, and connect with potential colleagues on LinkedIn. You never know who might have the inside scoop on job openings or can put in a good word for you.
✨Tip Number 2
Show off your skills! Create a portfolio or GitHub repository showcasing your projects, especially those related to cloud infrastructure or platform engineering. This gives us a tangible way to see what you can do beyond your CV.
✨Tip Number 3
Prepare for interviews by brushing up on your technical skills and understanding our mission at Cogna. Be ready to discuss how your experience aligns with our goals and how you can contribute to solving complex challenges.
✨Tip Number 4
Don’t hesitate to apply through our website! Even if you don’t tick every box, we value diverse experiences and perspectives. If our mission resonates with you, we want to hear from you!
We think you need these skills to ace Platform Engineer
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show Your Passion:When you write your application, let your enthusiasm for the role and our mission shine through. We want to see that you're genuinely excited about tackling the challenges in critical industries and how your skills can contribute to our goals.
Tailor Your Experience:Make sure to highlight relevant experiences that align with the job description. Even if you don’t tick every box, we appreciate diverse backgrounds, so focus on what makes you unique and how your skills can help us build a better platform.
Be Clear and Concise:Keep your application straightforward and to the point. We love clarity! Use bullet points where possible to make it easy for us to see your key achievements and skills at a glance.
Apply Through Our Website:We encourage you to apply directly through our website. It’s the best way for us to receive your application and ensures you’re considered for the role. Plus, it shows you’re keen to join our team!
How to prepare for a job interview at Cogna Ltd
✨Know Your Tech Stack
Make sure you’re well-versed in the technologies mentioned in the job description, especially Azure, Kubernetes, and the programming languages like Python, TypeScript, and Go. Brush up on your knowledge of Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform and CI/CD practices, as these will likely come up during technical discussions.
✨Showcase Your Problem-Solving Skills
Prepare to discuss specific examples where you've tackled complex challenges in platform engineering or cloud infrastructure. Think about how you’ve improved system resilience or optimised deployment processes, and be ready to explain your thought process and the impact of your solutions.
✨Emphasise Collaboration
Since this role involves cross-functional teamwork, be prepared to share experiences where you’ve successfully collaborated with other teams, such as product managers or support staff. Highlight how you’ve contributed to shared goals and how you approach communication in a team setting.
✨Demonstrate a Security Mindset
Given the emphasis on security in the job description, be ready to discuss your understanding of secure design principles and how you’ve implemented security controls in past projects. This could include anything from identity management to threat modelling, so have some concrete examples at hand.
