Identity & Platform Engineer

Identity & Platform Engineer - (Contract)

Era4 develops, owns and operates AI infrastructure across the UK, powered by renewable energy. Converting legacy industrial and energy sites into modern data‑centre facilities, Era4 is combining brownfield regeneration opportunities with cleaner, efficient, scalable compute capacity for healthcare, research, finance, enterprise, and public‑sector organisations

Initial 3 month contract.

The Identity & Platform Engineer is responsible for designing, implementing and operating the core platform services that provide:

• Sovereign identity management
• Federation and authentication services
• Privileged access management
• Secrets management
• Customer identity integration
• Platform security and governance

The successful candidate will play a key role in delivering a Zero Trust, sovereign cloud platform built around:
FreeIPA, Teleport, authentik, Bitwarden, Kubernetes.

• Design, implement and operate the sovereign identity platform supporting workforce, administrative and customer identity domains.
• Implement and maintain FreeIPA as the authoritative administrative identity platform.
• Deploy, configure and operate authentik for customer federation, SAML and OIDC integration.
• Implement and maintain Teleport as the privileged access management platform.
• Design and maintain RBAC models across Kubernetes, Rafay and supporting platform services.
• Integrate phishing-resistant MFA technologies including Web Authn and FIDO2 security keys.
• Implement identity lifecycle management processes including onboarding, access reviews and deprovisioning.
• Support customer identity federation onboarding and integration activities.
• Contribute to the ongoing evolution of the platform's Zero Trust architecture

• Implement Zero Trust security controls across platform services.
• Design and maintain Kubernetes RBAC and tenant isolation controls.
• Implement privileged access governance using Teleport.
• Maintain audit logging, compliance evidence collection and security monitoring capabilities.
• Support security reviews, threat modelling and risk assessments.
• Implement security hardening standards across Kubernetes, Linux and supporting infrastructure.
• Participate in security incident response and root cause analysis activities.
• Maintain compliance with security and governance requirements

• Operate Bitwarden and Bitwarden Secrets Manager platforms.
• Manage operational credentials, API keys and automation secrets.
• Implement secure secret distribution patterns for platform and application workloads.
• Support certificate lifecycle management and PKI integration.
• Maintain operational processes for break‑glass credential governance and recovery.

• Hands‑on experience operating production Kubernetes environments.
• Solid Linux systems administration and troubleshooting experience.
• Knowledge designing and operating Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions
• Experience with LDAP, Kerberos, SAML and OpenID Connect (OIDC).
• Previous experience implementing authentication, federation and RBAC solutions.
• Skilled in operating infrastructure and platform security services.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code and automation tooling.
• Knowledge implementing monitoring, logging and observability solutions.
• Solid understanding of Zero Trust security principles.
• Experience with Git Ops practices and cloud‑native operational models.
• Proven incident management and root cause analysis experience.

• Prior experience with FreeIPA or enterprise directory services.
• Experience with authentik, Keycloak or similar federation platforms.
• Knowledge with Teleport, Cyber Ark or other privileged access management technologies.
• Experience with Bitwarden, Vault or secrets management platforms.
• Knowledge operating GPU‑enabled Kubernetes environments.
• Previously supported AI, HPC or large‑scale compute platforms.
• Experience implementing PKI and certificate management solutions.
• Kubernetes multi‑tenancy and platform security experience.
• Sovereign, regulated or highly secure environments exposure.
• Familiarity with SOC2, ISO
  27001, NCSC or equivalent security frameworks.
• Background in Platform Engineering, Dev Ops or Site Reliability Engineering

You’llbe joining a mission‑driven start‑up building critical national infrastructure, where operational excellence directly enables growth. This role offers high visibility with leadership, real autonomy, and the chance to shape how a next‑generation company operates at scale.

Era4 is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

United Kingdom (Occasional office visit maybe required)