Senior Azure Platform Engineer in Manchester

Location: Office in Manchester city centre, ideally 2 days per week in office but open to once per month in the office if needed.

Salary: £80-90k plus benefits.

Key skills: Azure, AKS/Kubernetes, Terraform, Golang, AI tooling and platform engineering automation.

You’ve spent years building and improving cloud platforms. You know what good infrastructure looks like, how to scale systems properly, and how to create environments that engineers actually enjoy working in. You’re probably the person people come to when things get complicated. Whether that’s improving Kubernetes environments, designing resilient Azure infrastructure, fixing bottlenecks in CI/CD pipelines, or helping teams adopt better engineering practices, you’re the one who figures it out. You’re also curious about where engineering is heading next, especially when it comes to AI.

I’m working with a technology business that is going all-in on AI across its engineering and platform function. They’re investing heavily in AI-assisted tooling, automation, operational intelligence, and developer experience improvements, and they want Platform Engineers who are excited about being part of that journey.

You’ll be working in an environment where tools like GitHub Copilot, OpenAI models, Claude, Gemini, AI-powered observability platforms, intelligent deployment workflows, and internal AI tooling are actively being explored and introduced to improve how engineering teams work day to day. This isn’t about ticking a buzzword box. They genuinely want to build a modern engineering environment where AI helps reduce repetitive work, improve operational visibility, speed up delivery, and make developers more effective.

From a technical perspective, this is a senior, hands-on platform engineering role where you’ll have a lot of influence over how things are built moving forward. You’ll be designing and improving Azure infrastructure, evolving Kubernetes platforms within AKS, building reusable Infrastructure-as-Code patterns using Terraform and Crossplane, and helping improve reliability, observability, and security across the wider platform estate. You’ll also spend time improving developer tooling and CI/CD processes, helping engineering teams deploy faster and more safely while reducing friction wherever possible.

They’re looking for someone who enjoys ownership. Someone who can lead large technical initiatives, mentor other engineers, and help shape engineering standards, while still being close to the technology.

Technically, you’ll need strong experience with:

• Azure cloud environments
• Kubernetes and AKS
• Terraform and Infrastructure-as-Code
• Golang
• CI/CD tooling and automation
• Observability tooling such as Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or LGTM stacks
• Platform reliability, scalability, and security best practices

If you’ve worked in platform engineering, DevOps, SRE, or cloud infrastructure environments where you’ve helped modernise systems and improve engineering practices at scale, you’ll likely fit in very well here. There’s also plenty of room for progression. The platform function is continuing to grow, so this role has a clear path towards future Staff or Principal-level opportunities over time.

On top of the salary, there’s a strong benefits package including enhanced annual leave, personal training budgets, enhanced pension contributions, hybrid working, company-paid sick leave, enhanced family policies, and additional flexibility around holidays and working arrangements.

If you’re looking for a role where you can work with modern cloud technology, influence technical direction, and help shape how AI is integrated into platform engineering, this could be a very good fit for you.