AWS Cloud Engineer - Data & AI Domain

AWS Cloud Engineer | S3 | Data & AI Domain | Milton KeynesCountry: United Kingdom

IT STARTS HERE

Santander (www.santander.com) is evolving from a global, high-impact brand into a technology-driven organisation, and our people are at the heart of this journey. Together, we are driving a customer-centric transformation that values bold thinking, innovation, and the courage to challenge what’s possible.

This is more than a strategic shift. It’s a chance for driven professionals to grow, learn, and make a real difference.

Our mission is to contribute to help more people and businesses prosper. We embrace a strong risk culture and all our professionals at all levels are expected to take a proactive and responsible approach toward risk management.

The Data & AI Domain at Santander is responsible for setting the strategic direction for data, analytics, and artificial intelligence across the organisation. It ensures that data is managed as a trusted enterprise asset and that advanced technologies are applied responsibly, securely, and effectively to create value for customers and the business.

THE DIFFERENCE YOU MAKE

The Data & AI Domain is looking for a AWS Cloud Engineer based out of Milton Keynes.

In this role, you will be responsible for engineering, operating, and evolving the AWS data lake platform, including the cloud infrastructure, shared services, and data engineering applications that sit on top of it. You will work closely with data engineering, analytics, security, and architecture teams to ensure the platform is secure, resilient, cost‑effective, and scalable, enabling teams to deliver data products safely and efficiently.

This is a hands‑on engineering role, focused on building and running cloud platforms rather than line management.

The difference you’ll make:

• Support the engineering, operation, reliability and continuous improvement of Santander's AWS data lake.
• Build, configure and support AWS platform capabilities using services such as S3, IAM, VPC, KMS, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Glue, Athena, EMR, Lambda and Step Functions, following approved designs and standards.
• Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code for AWS environments and reusable platform components, with guidance from experienced engineers.
• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation that support safe, repeatable and controlled platform changes.
• Apply approved cloud security controls, including least-privilege access, encryption, network isolation, secrets management and policy enforcement.
• Provide operational support for Spark, batch and, where required, streaming workloads running on the platform.
• Support platform resilience through monitoring, alerting, incident response, problem investigation and maintenance of operational runbooks.
• Identify opportunities to improve performance, capacity and cloud cost, escalating recommendations through the appropriate engineering channels.
• Work with Data Engineering, Analytics, Security, Architecture and Risk teams to deliver platform changes in line with Santander standards and regulatory expectations.
  

We’re shaping the way we work through innovation, cutting-edge technology, collaboration and the freedom to explore new ideas. To succeed in this role, you will be responsible for:

• Deliver assigned AWS data lake platform changes and operational activities to agreed quality, control and timescale expectations.
• Follow regulatory requirements, the Santander Operational Risk Framework and internal technology standards, raising risks or control gaps promptly.
• Configure and support secure multi-account AWS environments in line with approved architecture and engineering patterns.
• Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code modules and reusable components, contributing to consistent delivery across teams.
• Use CI/CD and release controls to promote infrastructure and platform changes safely across development, test and production.
• Monitor platform health, performance and cost, using observability tooling to identify issues, investigate causes and support improvement actions.
• Help identify and remediate technology obsolescence, platform risks, resilience gaps and operational control weaknesses, escalating complex issues when required.
• Work with Enterprise Architecture, Data Architecture, Security, Risk and Data Engineering to deliver changes aligned with approved architectures and standards.

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

Our people are our greatest strength. Every individual contributes unique perspectives that make us stronger as a team and as an organisation. We’re enabling teams to go beyond by valuing who they are and empowering what they bring.

The following requirements represent the knowledge, skills, and abilities essential for success in this role. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Professional Experience

• AWS Platform Engineering: Proven experience engineering, operating, and evolving secure, resilient, and scalable AWS platforms supporting enterprise data and analytics workloads. (Required)
• Infrastructure as Code and Automation: Experience delivering cloud infrastructure through Infrastructure as Code and automation practices, enabling consistent, repeatable, and controlled management of AWS environments and platform services. (Required)
• DevOps and CI/CD: Experience applying DevOps and CI/CD practices to manage the build, release, deployment, and controlled promotion of cloud platform changes across enterprise environments. (Required)
• Data Lake and Analytics: Experience supporting enterprise data lake and analytics platforms, including the infrastructure and platform capabilities required for batch, streaming, and near-real-time workloads. (Required)
• Security, Operations and FinOps: Experience operating AWS platforms with responsibility for cloud security, observability, operational resilience, capacity management, and cost optimisation within an enterprise environment. (Required)
• Agentic AI and AI-Assisted Engineering: Experience or practical exposure to agentic AI and AI-assisted engineering tools and technologies. (Required)
• Way of working: Experience working with agile or product-aligned delivery models, and emerging technologies such as Agentic AI within data engineering environments. (Preferred)

Education

• Degree in software engineering, computer science or related field (Required)
• Desirable AWS certification (e.g. AWS Solutions Architect – Associate, AWS CloudOps Engineer or AWS Data Engineer) (Preferred)

Languages

• English
• Spanish (Preferred)

Hard Skills

AWS Platform Engineering

• Hands-on experience with AWS cloud architecture, including key services like S3, IAM, VPC, KMS, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Glue, Athena, EMR, Lambda, Step Functions, and SageMaker. (Required)
• Build and operate secure, resilient, and scalable multi-account AWS environments for enterprise data lake and analytics workloads. (Required)
• Strong experience managing AWS data and analytics platforms, including application and framework management, supporting batch and streaming workloads from a platform and infrastructure perspective. (Required)

IaC and CI/CD

• Hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC), using tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or AWS CDK to provision and manage secure, consistent, and repeatable AWS environments and platform services. (Required)
• Strong experience with CI/CD practices and tooling, such as Git, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or AWS CodePipeline, to automate build, testing, deployment, and controlled promotion of platform changes across environments. (Required)

Data Lake and Analytics

• Experience in data ingestion, processing, transformation, and delivery using batch, streaming, and real-time methods. (Required)
• Skilled in SQL and NoSQL databases for implementing data warehouses and data lakes. (Required)
• Data lake platform operations, including ingestion frameworks, access layers, shared services and workload support from an infrastructure perspective. (Required)
• Hands-on experience in Spark-based platforms (e.g. EMR, Glue or Databricks) including troubleshooting, scaling and performance optimisation. (Required)
• Programming expertise in Python, Java, Scala, SQL, Spark, Unix shell scripting, and AWS CLI (Required)
• Support for streaming and near real-time workloads, including exposure to Kafka or comparable streaming technologies. (Preferred)
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Security, Operations and FinOps

• Solid understanding of cloud security—identity and access management, encryption, and network isolation. (Required)
• Experience in observability and operational tools using logs, metrics, alerts, incident management, root cause analysis and runbooks. (Required)
• FinOps mindset that takes care of cloud cost optimisation. (Required)

Agentic AI and AI-Assisted Engineering

• Practical knowledge of agentic AI tooling and integration patterns, including tools such as Devin and Atlassian Rovo, and an understanding of Model Context Protocol (MCP) for enabling AI agents to securely interact with AWS, engineering tools and other platform services. (Preferred) 

Desirable

• Exposure to data governance tooling such as data catalogues or access control frameworks. (Preferred)
• Experience working in Agile or product-aligned teams, with working knowledge of JIRA. (Preferred)

Soft Skills

• Collaboration: Collaborate effectively with engineering, security, architecture and delivery teams to achieve practical outcomes within agreed responsibilities.
• Problem Solving: Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills, with the ability to investigate complex platform issues, identify root causes and implement pragmatic solutions.
• Ownership and Accountability: Take ownership of assigned engineering and operational activities, proactively identifying risks, issues and improvement opportunities and following them through to resolution.
• Communication: Communicate technical concepts, issues and decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, adapting the level of detail to the audience.

WE VALUE YOUR IMPACT

At Santander, your contribution matters. We recognise the difference you make every day, and we make sure you feel valued, supported and rewarded in return.

Here, recognition goes beyond pay. It’s about the pride you feel in your work, the impact you have on customers and communities, and the opportunities you have to grow and thrive — personally and professionally.

Salary Range: 

• £60,800.00 - £91,200.00 per annum (depending on experience)
• This salary range represents the expected remuneration for the role. Annual salary is based on a standard 35-hour working week. Actual salary offered will depend on skills, experience, qualifications and location.
• 30 days’ holiday plus bank holidays, which increases to 31 days after. 5yrs service, with the option to purchase up to 5 contractual days per year.
• £6,000 car allowance per year.
• Company funded individual private medical insurance.
• Protection for you and your family, with company-funded death-in-service benefit and income protection insurance, and the option to take advantage of discounted rates for additional life assurance and critical illness cover.

• Share in Santander’s success by saving or investing in our share plans. 
• As a Santander UK employee, you are able to request staff versions of our products like our Edge Current Accounts and Credit Cards with no fees, as well as apply to many other deals and discounts in Santander products and services.
• Competitive rewards that reflect the real impact you make and the value you bring.
• Wellbeing that goes beyond work — we work with a range of wellbeing partners across our 4 pillars of wellbeing (physical, mental, social and financial) to give you access to a suite of apps, discounted gym and fitness access, weekly online classes, flexible healthcare and mental health support.
• Support for every life stage — from menopause and pregnancy to parenthood and beyond, with enhanced family leave, childcare options and tailored wellbeing support.
• Time to give back through volunteering opportunities that let you make a difference in the communities we serve.
• Global growth opportunities to shape your career, learn new skills and explore what’s possible across our international network.

Ready to be recognised? It starts with you.

LOCAL COMPLIANCE

At Santander, we’re proud to be an inclusive organisation that provides equal opportunities for everyone — regardless of age, gender, disability, civil status, race, religion or sexual orientation.

We’re committed to creating a recruitment experience that’s accessible, fair and welcoming for all candidates.

We want our people to thrive — at work and at home — while delivering the best outcomes for our customers and supporting each other to grow.

To make this possible, our roles are site-based with a hybrid working pattern, where colleagues are expected to attend the office at least 12 days per month (pro-rata for part-time roles).

When applying, please consider the travel distance, time and cost to your chosen office location(s). 

Right to work in the UK

• All candidates must have the right to work in the UK to commence employment with Santander.

WHAT TO DO NEXT

If this sounds like a role you are interested in, then please apply.

If there’s anything we can do in the recruitment process to help you achieve your best, get in touch. Whether it’s a copy of our application form in another format or additional assistance, we’re available through email. You can contact us at [email protected].

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