Platform Engineer

About The Key Support Services

The Key is the country’s most trusted provider of knowledge and know-how to education leaders determined to make a difference. We provide authoritative, up-to-the-minute sector intelligence, tools, services and resources that give leaders the knowledge to act.

Responsibilities

• The Platform Engineer designs, operates, and continuously optimises the organisation's cloud-based platform to guarantee high reliability, scalability, and performance.
• Acting as an operational anchor and developer experience champion, the role automates critical engineering processes, drives system security, and embeds cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) agentic coding workflows.
• By managing core cloud infrastructure and proactive observability, the position enables seamless software delivery and minimises operational downtime across test and production environments.Cloud Infrastructure & Architecture
• Engineer, plan, and deliver scalable cloud infrastructure upgrades and optimisations using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools.
• Continuously optimise the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and wider cloud environment to boost efficiency, performance, and overall system resilience.

Incident Management & Observability

• Own monitoring, alerting, and observability frameworks across production and test environments to proactively identify system defects.
• Lead incident response investigations, execute technical resolutions, and implement post-incident fixes to permanently prevent issue recurrence.

Developer Experience & CI/CD Support

• Build, maintain, and optimise software delivery and CI/CD pipelines to streamline deployment workflows.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex operational issues for developers, actively seeking ways to enhance overall developer experience and efficiency.

Automation & AI Tooling Integration

• Automate manual, repetitive operational tasks to reduce technical debt and maximise organisational efficiency.
• Leverage AI agentic coding tools daily for incident investigation and operational automation, extending internal agent capabilities to benefit the broader engineering department.

Platform Security & Compliance

• Enforce robust security practices across the platform to safeguard infrastructure in line with industry standards.
• Foster a proactive culture of security awareness and risk mitigation within the engineering team.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Communicate platform changes, technical concepts, and updates clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Coordinate complex operational projects across local and remote teams with high conscientiousness and structured self-organisation.

Requirements

Key success indicators

• Infrastructure availability and uptime across Google Cloud Platform services.
• Reduction in Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR) system incidents.
• Percentage of operational tasks automated and successfully integrated into AI agentic workflows.
• Measurable improvement in software delivery deployment frequency and CI/CD pipeline execution times.
• Developer satisfaction scores regarding internal platform reliability and developer tooling.
• Demonstrated proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tooling, preferably Terraform.
• Practical experience designing, operating, and managing Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) environments.
• Minimum of 2 years of hands-on experience in designing and managing robust CI/CD platforms.
• Minimum of 2 years of experience using GitHub or equivalent version control systems.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills tailored for technical and non-technical audiences.
• High level of conscientiousness, self-organisation, and ability to coordinate multi-stakeholder projects locally and remotely.

Preferred

• Genuine enthusiasm for working with AI coding agents and leveraging advanced automation tooling.
• Working knowledge of and exposure to the ISO27001 information security standard.
• Hands-on knowledge of database platforms such as MongoDB and PostgreSQL.
• Deep technical understanding of containerisation technologies.

Pay

Salary: GBP 55,000–60,000

Benefits

• The Key Support Services · United Kingdom (Remote) · Full-time · Posted 2026-09-15
• We place huge importance on caring for and developing our people. If you join us you can expect a good work-life balance and the training and support you need to succeed in your role and continue to progress. We are a socially conscious company, but one that also likes to have fun. We offer a generous holiday allowance, flexible hours, buying and selling holiday, enhanced maternity pay, free breakfast, fruit, and drinks, regular socials and much more.