Principal Cloud Engineer

Principal Cloud Engineer (AWS)

Salary: Up to £100,000 (dependent on experience) + Benefits
Location: Bristol / Malvern / Farnborough
Job Type: Permanent | Full Time | Hybrid

We’re partnering with an innovative organisation operating at the forefront of defence, security and technology to appoint an experienced Principal AWS Cloud Engineer.

This is an excellent opportunity for an accomplished cloud engineering professional to take a senior technical leadership role, shaping cloud strategy and architecture while working with highly resilient, scalable and secure AWS environments.

You’ll work across engineering teams to influence technical direction, establish cloud engineering best practice and help develop platforms and infrastructure capable of supporting complex, business‑critical technology.

As Principal AWS Cloud Engineer, you’ll provide technical leadership across cloud infrastructure and platform engineering, helping define the organisation’s overarching cloud strategy and architectural direction.

You’ll act as a senior technical authority and escalation point, working closely with engineering leadership while providing guidance and mentorship to engineers across different levels of experience.

This is a hands‑on technical leadership position requiring deep AWS expertise alongside strong architecture, Infrastructure as Code and software engineering experience.

You’ll also play an important role in developing engineering standards and promoting a culture of continuous learning, peer review and operational excellence.

You’ll play a key role in shaping and delivering the organisation’s cloud engineering capability by:

• Architecting complex, multi‑region and highly available AWS environments aligned with long‑term technology and product roadmaps.
• Providing technical leadership and guidance across multiple engineering squads.
• Designing highly resilient, scalable and secure distributed cloud systems.
• Maintaining complex, modular Infrastructure as Code using technologies such as Terraform, AWS CDK or Pulumi.
• Architecting internal developer platforms and enterprise‑grade CI/CD frameworks that enable engineering teams to operate autonomously and securely.
• Evaluating emerging AWS services and third‑party technologies to identify opportunities to strengthen the technology stack and reduce time‑to‑market.
• Driving AWS cost optimisation initiatives and identifying opportunities to improve cloud efficiency.
• Resolving systemic performance bottlenecks across microservices, databases and network layers.
• Working cross‑functionally to ensure cloud infrastructure integrates effectively with wider product development.
• Mentoring Senior, Mid‑Level and Junior Engineers and supporting the continued development of cloud engineering capability across the organisation.

You’ll be an experienced AWS Cloud Engineer with extensive experience designing and delivering complex cloud infrastructure at scale.

You’ll also have:

• Extensive professional experience working specifically with AWS cloud infrastructure.
• Expert knowledge of the wider AWS ecosystem, including complex networking technologies such as Transit Gateway and Direct Connect.
• Strong knowledge across AWS compute, data storage, networking and enterprise security configurations.
• Exceptional proficiency in Infrastructure as Code and configuration management.
• Strong software engineering experience with deep expertise in at least one modern programming language, such as Python, Go, Java or Node.js.
• Proven experience designing, deploying and maintaining large‑scale distributed systems and microservices architectures.
• Demonstrable experience leading significant technical projects and influencing technical decision‑making across multiple teams.
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