GCP Data Platform Engineer

Homeprotect was founded on a simple principle - to provide protection to people underserved by the home insurance industry. Since 2002, we've been combining smart technology with real human expertise to protect hundreds of thousands of unique homes across the UK. If you're someone who loves solving interesting problems, taking ownership and working with a team that aims high, speaks up and lifts each other, Homeprotect is a place where you can do meaningful work, grow your career and make a real difference for our customers.

Our customers come from all walks of life and so do our people. We're a small but perfectly formed team of insurance specialists, technologists, data scientists and customer champions - all bringing individual expertise, an appetite for innovation and a shared ambition to protect the homes and things people love. We work at pace, but we trust our people to work in a way that brings out their best. You'll collaborate closely across teams, have real ownership from day one and see the impact you have first-hand with flexible working to help you balance the needs of your role with the rhythm of your life. We've been recognised as a Great Place to Work UK for seven consecutive years - most recently ranked 29th nationally, jumping 71 places in a single year.

ROLE PURPOSE

The GCP Data Platform Engineer will provide specialist platform engineering capability for HomeProtect’s GCP Data Analytics Platform. The role will focus on building and maintaining reusable, secure and production-ready platform patterns that enable Data Engineers to deliver data pipelines, data products and analytical services safely and efficiently.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain the GCP platform capabilities required to support HomeProtect’s data analytics platform.
• Create and maintain reusable infrastructure-as-code patterns, templates and standards for data platform services.
• Provide secure and reliable platform foundations for data ingestion, orchestration, processing, analytical access and data sharing.
• Support the configuration and operation of core GCP data platform services, including BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Cloud Composer, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Dataplex and Analytics Hub.
• Define and maintain access control patterns for data workloads, including IAM, service accounts, users, datasets and shared services.
• Build and support deployment and environment promotion patterns for data platform infrastructure and services.
• Support integration with existing Azure data platform services where required, particularly during migration, coexistence and transition activities.
• Own and improve CI/CD patterns for data platform infrastructure and services, ensuring changes can be tested, promoted and released safely across environments.
• Provide platform-level observability, including monitoring, alerting, logging, dashboards and operational tooling for production data services.
• Support platform-level controls for reliability, security, cost, quota management, performance and operational resilience.
• Create and maintain technical documentation, platform standards, ADRs and runbooks for data platform services.
• Work closely with Data Engineers, the wider platform team and security teams to ensure data platform capabilities are delivered safely, consistently and in line with business priorities.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

• Experience working as a GCP Platform Engineer, Data Platform Engineer, Cloud Engineer or Infrastructure Engineer supporting production data workloads.
• Strong hands-on experience with GCP in a production environment.
• Working knowledge of Azure data or cloud platform services, with the ability to support cross-cloud integration or migration activity where required.
• Strong experience with Terraform and infrastructure-as-code.
• Experience designing reusable cloud platform patterns, templates and standards.
• Experience provisioning and supporting GCP services used for data workloads.
• Experience implementing IAM, service account and access control patterns for cloud services.
• Experience supporting orchestration platforms such as Cloud Composer or Airflow.
• Experience implementing monitoring, alerting, logging and operational dashboards for production cloud services.
• Experience designing, implementing or supporting CI/CD patterns for infrastructure, platform services and data workload deployment.
• Good understanding of data platform architecture, including ingestion, orchestration, storage, processing, governance and analytical access.
• Understanding of Bronze, Silver and Gold data layers and how platform decisions support modern data engineering delivery.
• Ability to make pragmatic trade-offs across reliability, security, cost, delivery speed, maintainability and operational complexity.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain platform decisions clearly to engineers, stakeholders and non-specialists.
• Experience working in Agile delivery teams.

BENEFITS

• Learning and Growth: We invest in your development through structured learning, mentoring, buddying, on-the-job experience and cross-functional projects.
• Health and Wellbeing: We offer private healthcare through BUPA, an Employee Assistance Programme covering legal, financial and counselling support for you, a Wellbeing Centre with online tools and resources, regular wellbeing seminars and workshops, annual flu jabs and an annual eye care voucher.
• Financial Security and Reward: We offer an annual discretionary bonus scheme up to 30% of your base pay, life insurance at four times your salary, and a pension with Aegon.
• Time Off: 25 days' annual leave plus bank holidays, with the option to buy or sell up to five additional days each year.
• Genuine Flexible Working: We trust our people to work in a way that best suits them - with flexible working to balance the needs of your role with the rhythm of your life.
• Purpose and Community: We care about more than just the work. Through our charity partnership with Refuge, the UK's largest specialist domestic abuse charity and regular social, wellbeing and charitable events throughout the year, there are plenty of ways to connect, give back and feel part of something bigger.

We're proud to be an equal opportunity employer and actively encourage applications from all backgrounds. We believe in celebrating difference - everything that makes both our customers and our people unique. We consider visa sponsorship on a case by case basis for the right candidate, so please don't let that stop you from applying. We encourage you to let us know if you need any extra help with your application or have any requirements at any stage of the recruitment journey, we want the process to work for you.

As an FCA regulated insurer, doing the right thing isn't a compliance requirement - it's simply how we work. All colleagues are expected to uphold the FCA Individual Conduct Rules (1–6) and act with integrity, due skill and care, openness with regulators and a genuine commitment to delivering good outcomes for our customers.