Platform Operations Engineer

The Platform Operations Engineer is responsible for maintaining and supporting on-premises infrastructure platforms that underpin mission-critical systems. This role ensures platform reliability, operational stability, and drives infrastructure modernisation and automation initiatives, while maintaining robust support for existing agency systems.

The role also supports the agency’s transition towards cloud adoption and hybrid infrastructure, including the migration and modernisation of existing workloads. You will collaborate closely with internal teams and vendors to ensure the stability, performance, and security of essential government IT infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities

1. Maintain and support critical infrastructure platforms, including compute, storage, virtualisation, and supporting systems across development, staging, and production environments.
2. Implement platform standards, automation, and modern operational practices to improve efficiency and reliability.
3. Support infrastructure enhancement and modernisation initiatives in alignment with enterprise architecture standards.
4. Manage virtualisation platforms (e.g., VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix), including capacity monitoring, performance optimisation, and lifecycle management.
5. Execute patching and upgrade strategies using automation while minimising service disruption.
6. Provide L2/L3 technical support, including incident management, root cause analysis, and problem resolution.
7. Maintain backup, disaster recovery (DR), and high-availability (HA) solutions.
8. Implement and enforce security controls, including access management, system hardening, and compliance monitoring.
9. Collaborate with application, network, and vendor teams to ensure platform stability, scalability, and service performance.
10. Develop and maintain documentation, runbooks, and standard operating procedures (SOPs).
11. Support and troubleshoot infrastructure and network-related issues to ensure end-to-end service availability.
12. Support cloud migration and hybrid infrastructure initiatives, including workload assessment, migration planning, and post-migration operational support.

Requirements

1. Over 6 years of relevant experience in infrastructure or platform operations.
2. Strong problem-solving and analytical skills with the ability to work independently.
3. Experience in enterprise infrastructure environments.
4. Familiarity with vendor and contract management.
5. Strong communication skills to engage both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
6. Strong teamwork, organisational, and interpersonal skills.

Technical Requirements

1. Experience with virtualisation platforms (e.g., VMware vSphere, Hyper-V, Nutanix).
2. Experience with storage systems (SAN, NAS) and enterprise backup solutions (e.g., Commvault, Veeam, Cohesity).
3. Proficiency in Red Hat Linux and/or Windows Server administration.
4. Familiarity with monitoring and observability platforms.
5. Solid understanding of networking concepts, including TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, routing and switching, firewalls, load balancing, and network segmentation.
6. Understanding of data centre network fundamentals.
7. Experience with high-availability and disaster recovery solutions.
8. Experience supporting infrastructure modernisation and migration initiatives.
9. Strong documentation skills.
10. Familiarity with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure) and hybrid infrastructure concepts.

Desired Technical Skills

1. Experience with automation tools (e.g., Ansible, Puppet, Chef).
2. Familiarity with scripting languages (e.g., Python, PowerShell, Bash).
3. Experience implementing and maintaining monitoring and observability solutions (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Dynatrace, Splunk).
4. Familiarity with containerisation and orchestration platforms (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).
5. Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for automated provisioning and configuration.

Qualifications

Degree or Diploma in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field.

Desired Certifications

1. VMware Certified Professional (VCP).
2. Microsoft Certified: Windows Server.
3. Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE).
4. ITIL v4 Foundation.
5. AWS or Azure Associate-level (or equivalent) cloud certifications