At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead the development of a secure, scalable platform for engineering teams.
- Company: Join a dynamic tech company focused on innovation and collaboration.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, flexible working options, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Opportunity to evolve into a leadership role as the company grows.
- Why this job: Shape the future of platform engineering and make a real impact.
- Qualifications: Strong experience in platform engineering, cloud infrastructure, and automation.
The predicted salary is between 60000 - 80000 £ per year.
We are looking for a senior-level Platform Engineer to help shape and scale the next phase of our engineering and platform capability. This role is focused on building a secure, reliable, developer-friendly platform function that enables engineering teams to deliver quickly and safely. The successful candidate will initially operate as a hands-on senior technical contributor while helping define the foundations of a future platform engineering capability within the organisation.
Over time, this role is expected to evolve into a broader platform leadership position (Head of Platform) as the company and engineering organisation scales. This is not a traditional “ops support” role. The focus is on platform enablement, automation, operational maturity, resilience, and improving developer experience across engineering delivery.
The role will contribute directly to the scalability and operational maturity of both internal systems and customer-facing products by building reusable platform capabilities, operational patterns, and shared engineering infrastructure.
Key Responsibilities- Platform Engineering & Infrastructure
- Design, build, and maintain scalable cloud infrastructure and platform tooling
- Improve reliability, observability, deployment automation, and operational resilience
- Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines and engineering workflows
- Support infrastructure-as-code and automation-first operational practices
- Standardise and improve engineering environments and deployment processes
- Build scalable operational foundations for distributed and cloud-native systems
- Product & Platform Enablement
- Contribute directly to the scalability and operational maturity of core products and services
- Build reusable platform capabilities and shared operational primitives for engineering teams
- Support event streaming and messaging infrastructure patterns
- Develop scalable storage and provisioning patterns (e.g. object storage / S3-based workflows)
- Implement repeatable deployment and environment orchestration approaches
- Support secrets management and configuration management patterns
- Improve authentication, auditability, logging, and observability foundations
- Build secure-by-default operational patterns and reusable platform abstractions
- Reduce repeated operational complexity across engineering teams
- Developer Enablement
- Improve developer experience and reduce operational friction for engineering teams
- Build self-service capabilities and reusable platform patterns where appropriate
- Support engineering teams with operational tooling, environment management, and deployment workflows
- Help establish platform standards and golden paths for delivery teams
- Reduce cognitive load and operational dependency for engineering teams
- Security & Governance Collaboration
- Work closely with security and engineering leadership to operationalise security controls and governance requirements
- Support RBAC implementation, access governance, auditability, and break-glass procedures
- Ensure platform implementations align with security and compliance expectations
- Contribute to operational resilience and continuity planning
- Embed governance and security guardrails into platform workflows and automation
- Operational Support & Reliability
- Support incident response and operational troubleshooting where required
- Improve monitoring, alerting, and observability across environments
- Help establish operational SLAs and support workflows
- Reduce key-person dependency and operational risk across platform systems
- Contribute to scalable operational support and reliability practices
- Platform Capability Development
- Contribute to the evolution of the platform engineering function
- Help define operational processes, standards, and tooling strategy
- Mentor engineers on platform and operational best practices
- Contribute to long-term platform architecture and operational maturity
- Help shape the future internal developer platform and engineering enablement strategy
- Technical Experience
- Strong experience in platform engineering, DevOps, SRE, or cloud infrastructure roles
- Deep experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
- Strong infrastructure-as-code experience (Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation, etc.)
- Experience designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines
- Strong Linux/containerisation/Kubernetes experience
- Experience with observability, monitoring, and operational tooling
- Experience with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, or streaming platforms
- Experience implementing scalable deployment and platform patterns
- Strong automation and scripting capabilities
- Security & Governance Awareness
- Good understanding of RBAC, IAM, secrets management, and operational security practices
- Experience working within secure or regulated environments
- Understanding of auditability, operational governance, and least-privilege principles
- Ability to operationalise security controls
- Familiarity with secure-by-default infrastructure and platform design principles
- Engineering & Delivery Mindset
- Strong collaboration skills with engineering teams
- Focus on enablement
- Delivery-oriented mindset
- Ability to balance speed, reliability, security, and operational simplicity
- Comfortable operating in a scaling growth-stage environment
- Strong systems thinking and platform-oriented problem solving
- Systems thinking
- Automation-first mindset
- Operational ownership and accountability
- Strong communication and collaboration skills
- Calmness under operational pressure
- Ability to reduce complexity and improve engineering flow
- Strong platform and enablement mindset
- Improved engineering delivery velocity
- Reduced operational bottlenecks
- Reduced infrastructure and access-related friction
- Increased platform reliability and resilience
- Reduction in manual operational processes
- Improved auditability and operational governance
- Increased reuse of shared platform capabilities and operational patterns
- Reduced key-person dependency across platform systems
- Positive engineering feedback on platform enablement and developer experience
- Improved scalability and operational consistency across products and environments
This role is intended to evolve as the organisation scales. Over time, the successful candidate is expected to:
- Help build and shape the platform engineering function
- Define platform operational standards and processes
- Take increasing ownership of platform strategy and operational governance
- Build scalable internal platform capabilities and engineering enablement tooling
- Potentially grow into a Head of Platform leadership role
Initially reporting to: CTO
Working closely with: Engineering leadership, Security/platform architecture functions, Data engineering teams, Technical leads across delivery pods
The role is expected to become a key leadership function within the future engineering and platform organisation.
Principal Platform Engineer in Telford employer: DarkSkope
Join a forward-thinking company that prioritises innovation and collaboration, offering a dynamic work culture where your contributions directly impact the scalability and operational maturity of our platform. With a strong focus on employee growth, you will have the opportunity to evolve into a leadership role while benefiting from a supportive environment that values automation, developer experience, and operational excellence. Located in a vibrant area, we provide a unique blend of professional development and a fulfilling work-life balance, making us an excellent employer for those seeking meaningful and rewarding careers.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Principal Platform Engineer in Telford
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at DarkSkope or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to DarkSkope.
✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
Don’t underestimate the power of online developer communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and even Reddit. Participate in discussions, share your projects, and build your visibility. We can often find opportunities through these channels that can lead to a full-time gig at companies like DarkSkope.
✨Explore Job Boards Specifically for Tech Roles
Keep your eyes peeled on job boards that focus on tech roles. Sites like TechCareers or Stack Overflow Jobs can often have listings for companies like DarkSkope that might not show up on broader job sites. Make it a habit to check these regularly, and don’t hesitate to apply directly through our website!
We think you need these skills to ace Principal Platform Engineer in Telford
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at DarkSkope.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at DarkSkope and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at DarkSkope
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If DarkSkope uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.
