Principal Engineer; Cloud - Aws

Principal AWS Cloud Engineer

As a Principal AWS Cloud Engineer, you will lead the technical direction of our cloud infrastructure and platform engineering initiatives, defining the overarching cloud strategy and architecting highly resilient, scalable, and secure distributed systems on AWS.

Day-to-day, you’ll serve as the highest level of technical escalation and be a trusted advisor to engineering leadership, providing technical leadership and mentorship to senior, mid‑level, and junior engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning, rigorous peer review, and operational excellence.

• Architect complex, multi‑region, highly available AWS cloud environments aligned with long‑term business goals and product roadmaps.
• Continuously evaluate emerging AWS services and third‑party tools to determine their viability for improving our technology stack and reducing time‑to‑market.
• Guide technical decision‑making across multiple engineering squads and cross‑functional collaboration to ensure seamless integration of cloud infrastructure with product development.
• Maintain complex, modular codebases using Terraform, AWS CDK, or Pulumi.
• Architect internal developer platforms and enterprise‑grade CI/CD frameworks that enable development teams to operate autonomously and securely.
• Implement AWS cost optimisation strategies and drive optimisations to resolve systemic performance bottlenecks across microservices, databases, and network layers.

• Extensive experience in cloud infrastructure dedicated specifically to AWS.
• Expert knowledge of the entire AWS ecosystem, particularly complex networking (Transit Gateway, Direct Connect), compute, data storage, and enterprise security configurations.
• Exceptional proficiency in Infrastructure as Code and configuration management.
• Strong software background with deep expertise in at least one modern programming language (Python, Go, Java, or Node.js).
• Demonstrated experience leading large technical projects, influencing organisational engineering culture and driving cross‑team consensus.
• Proven track record of designing, deploying, and maintaining large‑scale, distributed software systems and microservices architectures.

• Minimum of AWS Associate certification or higher.

This role is 37 hours per week based at any of our main UK sites with a minimum average site attendance of three days per week. As part of a commitment to maintaining high service availability and rapid incident response, you may be asked to work during specific times and participate in an on‑call rota.

We value difference and don't insist on a fixed idea regarding background or education; if you can demonstrate the required experience and a willingness to learn, we want to hear from you.

We are a disability‑confident, committed employer. If you have a disability or need reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.

• Matched contribution pension scheme with life assurance.
• Generous holiday allowance, with the option to purchase additional days.
• Options to join Health Cash Plan, Private Medical Insurance, and Dental Insurance.
• Employee discount portal covering personal accident, travel, restaurants, cinema tickets and more.
• Support for the Armed Forces community with a Gold Award standard in the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme.
• Volunteering opportunities with charitable and local community causes.