Senior Platform Engineer - Secure Operations

Your Impact Are you ready to take the next step in your engineering career and help operate, maintain and improve secure platforms that protect national security? At Leonardo, our Senior Platform Engineers combine strong hands‑on technical capability with engineering leadership, service ownership and continuous improvement, helping ensure the platforms supporting our customers remain secure, available and fit for purpose. Your work at Leonardo UK will see you solve customer and service problems in an agile, innovative and team‑centric manner.

This is an operational role supporting highly controlled environments, requiring regular on‑site working and close collaboration with engineering, service management, security and customer teams. Leonardo UK is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to join the Cyber & Security Solutions Division team. This role is focused on operating, maintaining, assuring and improving platform and systems engineering solutions that underpin critical defence, government and public sector services.

What you will do as a Senior Platform Engineer Operate, maintain and improve secure Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and virtualised platforms within highly controlled environments. Take ownership of operational engineering activities and defined work packages, including planning, estimation, execution, risk management and progress reporting. Provide technical leadership during incidents, problems and changes, coordinating investigation, recovery and root‑cause activity where required.

Maintain secure configurations, platform baselines, support documentation, runbooks and knowledge articles. Plan and deliver platform lifecycle activities including deployment, monitoring, patching, upgrading, vulnerability remediation, backup and service continuity. Troubleshoot complex platform, network, integration and service issues, working across engineering, cyber security, service management and customer teams. Develop, review and assure low‑level designs, implementation plans, test evidence and technical documentation. Mentor and guide Platform Engineers and Technicians, supporting knowledge transfer and the development of wider team capability.

Support operational readiness, service acceptance and transition from project delivery into business‑as‑usual support. Identify and implement continuous improvements through automation, reusable engineering patterns and more effective support processes. Support technical recruitment, interviewing and onboarding where required.

What you’ll bring Strong hands‑on technical ability with experience operating and supporting complex, secure platforms. The ability to balance engineering delivery with technical leadership, mentoring and operational ownership. A disciplined service mindset, with the confidence to take ownership of issues and represent engineering in technical and operational discussions. The ability to work across technical, security, service management and customer stakeholders to maintain service integrity.

Broad platform engineering capability, supported by deeper experience in one or more relevant technology areas.

• Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux administration and engineering.
• Enterprise virtualisation technologies, particularly VMware or Hyper‑V.
• Networking concepts including TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, routing and firewalls.
• Operation and support of platforms within highly controlled, regulated or secure environments, such as defence or air‑gapped systems.
• Infrastructure lifecycle management including deployment, configuration, monitoring, patching, upgrading, backup and sustainment.
• Incident, problem, change and configuration management within an ITIL‑aligned service environment.
• Cyber security controls,…