PLATFORM ENGINEER

PLATFORM ENGINEER

Department: IT & Business Systems

Employment Type: Permanent

Location: Remote, UK

Description

The Platform Engineer is responsible for acting as a hands-on engineer within the team that operates and maintains Nasstar's shared cloud platform across two sites. The role combines technical delivery, disciplined operations and continual skills development across physical infrastructure, storage, Proxmox virtualisation, Windows and Linux guest operating systems, Kubernetes, backup, SAN replication and platform disaster recovery. Because the platform hosts network control-plane components, the role operates within Nasstar’s Telecommunications Security Act (TSA) control framework and is responsible, at the appropriate level, for implementing, operating and evidencing allocated platform controls.

The Platform Engineer helps to ensure that the platform remains secure, resilient, supportable and appropriately governed. They deliver assigned operational and engineering work, participate in incident response and complex changes under appropriate leadership, and contribute evidence and improvement ideas to senior engineers and the Team Lead.

Key Responsibilities

• Operate as part of a cross-skilled team covering platform, storage, Windows, Linux and Kubernetes disciplines.
• Seek and act on technical review, share knowledge with colleagues and support objectives set by the Team Lead.
• Build sufficient cross-skilling and documentation to reduce key-person dependency while retaining named technical authorities for specialist areas.
• Manage assigned work effectively, participate in skills development and on-call coverage, and escalat capacity or capability risks.
• Promote a culture of ownership, learning, constructive challenge, automation and blameless problem investigation.
• Perform assigned incident, service-request, change, problem, patching, backup, capacity and lifecycle-management activities to approved standards, escalating risks, failures and authority decisions promptly.
• Deliver work against agreed priorities, balancing reactive support, planned maintenance, risk reduction and improvement work.
• Maintain actionable monitoring, operational runbooks, support procedures, configuration records and service reporting.
• Support effective on-call and specialist-escalation arrangements, and review avoidable out-of-hours demand.
• Maintain clear service boundaries, including managed OS, application-owner-managed OS and Kubernetes workload responsibilities.
• Implement and contribute to platform changes, maintenance plans, upgrades and operational standards.
• Maintain supported platform patterns, golden images, configuration standards and automation approaches.
• Perform, within delegated authority, the controlled assessment, testing, scheduling, deployment, validation and rollback of firmware, Proxmox, storage, management tooling, supported operating systems, standard agents and Kubernetes components; record results, contribute compliance evidence and elevate failures or exceptions.
• Perform structured troubleshooting and contribute to root-cause analysis across the infrastructure and operating-system stack.
• Monitor and report capacity, performance, availability and resilience risks; perform approved remediation and ...
• Raise and support supplier cases and technical escalation for Proxmox, HPE, NetApp and other platform products.
• Operate and assure platform and OS hardening, vulnerability remediation, privileged access, segregation, logging and other security controls in accordance with approved standards and the allocated TSA control set.
• Maintain auditable evidence for allocated TSA controls, support assurance and security testing, remediate technical findings and elevate suspected control failures or security compromises promptly.
• Maintain accurate technical inventory, deployment controls, host and VM evidence and usage data for Microsoft software operated under SPLA; implement approved licensing rules and support reconciliation and audit while Commercial or Finance retains agreement, interpretation, formal reporting and payment accountability.
• Operate backup services, investigate failures, perform authorised restores, maintain recovery evidence and elevate exceptions promptly.
• Monitor SAN replication and support technical platform failover and failback procedures across the dual-site environment.
• Ensure platform DR exercises are planned and supported, while maintaining the boundary between platform recovery and application-owner validation and recovery.
• Work with Security and service owners to contain or elevate workloads that present material security or platform risk.
• Contribute operational evidence and improvement ideas to the platform roadmap focused on security, supportability, resilience, capacity, lifecycle and operational efficiency.
• Operate allocated TSA controls in accordance with approved procedures, retain required evidence and promptly elevate control failures, non-compliant configurations or suspected security compromise.
• Maintain assigned Microsoft SPLA technical inventory and deployment evidence, follow approved licensing rules and support reconciliation without independently interpreting licence terms or owning formal reporting.
• Contribute to technical options, impact assessments and implementation plans for material platform decisions.
• Provide implementation evidence and technical input for architectural changes, new shared-platform capabilities and standards exceptions.
• Make routine implementation decisions within approved procedures and elevate matters outside delegated authority.
• Ensure approved decisions are implemented consistently and that architectural or operational risks are clearly recorded and elevated.
• Maintain effective working relationships with application and service owners, Network, Security/SOC, Security/Risk/Compliance, Service Desk/NOC, Architecture, Change Management, Commercial/Finance and datacentre teams.
• Set clear expectations about platform capabilities, application-owner responsibilities, maintenance requirements and recovery boundaries.
• Provide accurate service, risk, capacity, patching, vulnerability, backup and lifecycle reporting to relevant stakeholders.
• Support workload onboarding and assess requests against approved service patterns, standards and available capacity.

Within approved policies, architecture, procedures and delegated authority, the Platform Engineer is expected to:

• Plan and complete assigned operational and engineering work, raising priority conflicts promptly.
• Implement routine platform and OS changes within established standards and approved change records.
• Diagnose incidents, restore service within approved procedures and elevate when specialist or decision authority is required.
• Use privileged access only as authorised and protect credentials, evidence and audit records.
• Identify and elevate unsupported, insecure or operationally unsustainable workload requests.
• Record non-compliant configurations and seek remediation or formal exception.
• Elevate material design changes, standards exceptions and architectural risks to a Senior Platform Engineer or the Team Lead.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• Demonstrable experience operating infrastructure, platform, cloud or systems services in a production environment.
• Strong technical grounding in virtualisation and shared infrastructure, with experience in one or more of compute, storage, Windows, Linux or container platforms and the ability to develop broader capability.
• Experience operating business-critical services through incident, change, problem, patch, capacity and lifecycle processes.
• Experience of high-availability, backup, replication and disaster-recovery operations in a multi-site environment.
• Ability to assess technical risk, make proportionate decisions and communicate complex issues clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience creating standards, runbooks and repeatable operational practices, with a strong preference for automation and configuration control.
• Understanding of security hardening, vulnerability and patch management, privileged access, operational resilience, auditable control operation and disciplined work in regulated or security-sensitive environments.
• Experience participating effectively in incident response and working with other teams or suppliers.
• Hands-on experience with Proxmox VE or a comparable enterprise virtualisation platform.
• Experience with HPE Synergy, HPE 3PAR, NetApp storage or comparable enterprise infrastructure.
• Operational experience of both Windows Server and Linux environments.
• Experience operating Kubernetes in a production environment.
• Experience contributing to technical designs, change plans or governance submissions.
• Understanding of ITIL-aligned service management, Telecommunications Security Act controls, regulated hosting and Microsoft SPLA technical inventory or compliance evidence.
• Relevant technical, service-management or leadership qualifications; equivalent practical experience is equally acceptable.

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