Innovation Platform Engineer

About Freshfields

Freshfields is a global law firm with a long history of helping clients navigate complex challenges. As technology continues to reshape the legal industry, we are investing significantly in innovation, engineering excellence and AI-enabled solutions that enhance how we deliver services to our clients and support our people. Our Innovation team plays a central role in this journey, bringing together legal expertise, emerging technologies and engineering excellence to create scalable, secure and practical solutions that deliver real business value.

We are seeking an experienced Innovation Platform Engineer to help shape and build the technology platforms that underpin innovation across the firm. This is a hands-on engineering role for someone who enjoys solving complex technical challenges, creating reusable platforms and enabling teams to move quickly and safely from idea to production. You will design, engineer and ope rationalise secure, scalable cloud environments and innovation services across Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), supporting a growing portfolio of AI, automation and digital transformation initiatives.

Working closely with Innovation, Enterprise Architecture, Security, Infrastructure and Product teams, you will help establish the engineering standards, cloud patterns and operational approaches that make innovation sustainable at enterprise scale. From rapid prototyping and proof-of-concept development through to production-ready engineering and operational handover, you will play a key role in turning promising ideas into real-world solutions.

Lead the development and evolution of the firm's innovation platform across Azure and GCP. Design reusable cloud architectures, landing zones, deployment pipelines and shared engineering services. Build secure, scalable and automated cloud environments using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Dev Sec Ops  principles. Establish engineering standards, technical guardrails and operational best practices. Implement monitoring, observability and support capabilities for innovation services.

Partner with engineering and operational teams to transition successful prototypes into production. Develop and optimise CI/CD pipelines across multi-cloud environments. Support platform governance, resilience and cost optimisation.

Design and build prototypes and proof-of-concept solutions to validate new ideas quickly and effectively. Work iteratively, incorporating user feedback to improve solutions and accelerate learning. Develop reusable templates, automation assets and engineering components. Document technical designs, architecture decisions and implementation approaches. Help assess and shape solutions progressing through the innovation pipeline.

AI-enabled solutions leveraging Azure AI, Vertex AI, large language models and emerging agentic frameworks. Evaluate new technologies and assess their practical application within a professional services environment. Translate cutting-edge technical capabilities into scalable business solutions. Provide technical insight and feasibility assessments for innovation initiatives.

Work closely with Innovation stakeholders to understand business challenges and user needs. Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Security, Data and Infrastructure teams, to ensure solutions align with firm standards. Support testing and adoption activities, rapidly responding to feedback and enhancements. Prepare successful solutions for production implementation through documentation, knowledge transfer and operational readiness.

We're looking for someone who combines deep technical expertise with a pragmatic, delivery-focused mindset. You will likely bring:

• Strong engineering experience across Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
• Experience building and managing cloud-native platforms and services.
• Expertise in Infrastructure as Code, automation and platform engineering practices.
• Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines and…