Senior Platform Engineer in Bristol

We’re building the UK's next generation engineering powerhouse, providing critical technology that strengthens national security and resilience. We specialise in turning advances in sensing, AI, and communications into operational capability for the edge, where connectivity may be degraded or denied. Our work focuses on accelerating the deployment of technology, improving decision‑making for frontline teams, and protecting people and critical assets in demanding environments. Headquartered in Bristol, Rowden employs around 160 people and operates over 20,000 square feet of engineering and manufacturing facilities. We have a growing international footprint and are one of Europe’s fastest‑growing engineering businesses.

About the role

We’re seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to help build the engineering platform that underpins how Rowden develops, deploys, and operates technology. The platform will improve developer experience and make Rowden’s engineering faster, more consistent, more scalable, and more secure. This is a high‑impact opportunity to shape the foundations of one of the UK’s most exciting technology companies. Working closely with Software, Infrastructure, ML, IT, Product, QA, and Security teams, you’ll be hands‑on in delivering the platform vision and improving engineering experience. You’ll play a critical role in building the tooling, infrastructure, and capabilities that enable our engineers to solve complex customer problems. Candidates must be eligible for SC Clearance.

Key areas of responsibility

• Working within the Platforms team, you’ll build robust platform services, enabling self‑service infrastructure, seamless CI/CD, and strong observability, while also supporting API‑first development, system integration, and the adoption of AI/ML capabilities across the organisation.
• Turning platform strategy into reality through high‑quality engineering – setting standards and patterns that teams can adopt with confidence.
• Designing, building, and maintaining core platform infrastructure and services.
• Developing and evolving internal developer platform (IDP) capabilities, including self‑service provisioning and deployment workflows.
• Designing and supporting API‑first architectures to enable interoperability between systems, services, and external partners.
• Building and optimising CI/CD pipelines to support consistent, secure, and efficient software delivery.
• Enabling integration patterns across distributed systems, including event‑driven architectures and service‑based communication.
• Contributing to modular platform capabilities that allow teams to compose and extend functionality.
• Collaborating with Software, Infra, ML, IT, Product, QA, and Security teams to ensure the platform meets real‑world engineering needs.
• Implementing infrastructure‑as‑code and automation to ensure repeatability, scalability, and reliability.
• Embedding security, compliance, and best practices into the platform by design.
• Contributing to platform standards, patterns, and reusable components to drive consistency across teams.
• Improving observability, monitoring, and alerting capabilities across systems and services.
• Supporting onboarding of teams to the platform and enabling adoption through documentation and guidance.
• Continuously identifying opportunities to improve developer experience, reducing friction and cognitive load.

Key skills, experience and behaviours

We are looking for a highly capable, hands‑on engineer who enjoys solving complex problems and building systems that others rely on. Skills you’ll need:

• Strong experience building and operating cloud‑based platforms.
• Deep understanding of platform engineering principles, including infrastructure‑as‑code, CI/CD, system design, and service integration.
• Experience designing and working with APIs and building integration layers between systems.
• Experience with tools such as Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker, and modern CI/CD platforms.
• Experience with cloud and bare‑metal deployments.
• Understanding of modular platform design and composable architectures.
• Familiarity with observability tooling (e.g. logging, metrics, tracing) and building reliable systems.
• Knowledge of secure‑by‑design and zero‑trust principles.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals (e.g. Python, Go, or similar) to build platform tooling and automation.
• Experience working in cross‑functional teams and contributing to shared technical outcomes.

Behaviours that matter:

• Mission‑Focused: You care about enabling others to do their best work and delivering meaningful outcomes.
• Relentless: You take ownership and see problems through to resolution.
• Collaborative: You work effectively across teams, building trust and shared understanding.
• Quality‑Driven: You take pride in building robust, scalable, and maintainable systems.
• Pragmatic: You focus on solutions that work in practice, not just in theory.
• Curious & Adaptive: You continuously learn, improve, and embrace new approaches where they add value – particularly in fast‑moving areas like AI and platform integration.

Working at Rowden

We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are! We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid‑working model, with an average 3 days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part‑time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants. Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible. Finally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!