AWS Principal Platform Engineer

AWS Principal Platform Engineer - UK Security Clearance required.

Location: London, UK (Hybrid – typically ~1 day per week in office/on-site)
Contract: Permanent, Full-time
Package: £90,000 – £120,000 + 10% Bonus + 10% Shares + Benefits (see more below)

About Us

At Appvia, we help organisations navigate their journey to Cloud and DevOps maturity. We are a specialist cloud and platform engineering consultancy and product house, delivering modern cloud platforms that enable teams to build, deploy, and operate software securely and efficiently.

Our mission is to enable every organisation to deliver applications confidently in the cloud. We focus on building strong platform foundations, combining automation, governance, and developer enablement, so engineering teams can move faster without compromising on reliability or security.

We work across public and private sector customers, supporting large-scale transformation programmes and long-term platform evolution.

About the Role

As an AWS Principal Platform Engineer, you will play a senior technical leadership role across Appvia’s platform engineering engagements. You will help customers design, build, and evolve scalable, resilient, and secure cloud platforms, while guiding teams towards modern DevOps and platform engineering best practices.

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who enjoys operating at the intersection of engineering, architecture, and consultancy. You will work closely with engineers, delivery leads, and solution architects, shaping technical direction, supporting early-stage solution design, and mentoring teams as they deliver complex cloud platforms.

You will also contribute to Appvia’s wider engineering capability, influencing standards, patterns, and approaches that are reused across multiple customer engagements.

Interview Process - 4 Stage

1. Discovery conversation with Talent Acquisition
2. Paired technical assessment with an Engineering team member
3. Technical deep dive with Practice Leadership
4. Competency-focused final interview with Engineering Leadership

Important

You must either hold active SC, or be eligible for SC:

• British Passport or ILR
• To have resided in the UK for at least the last 5 years.
• Have no criminal records.
• Have no financial irregularities.

About you

You’ll be passionate about new technology and automation, and experienced in leading an Engineering Team in Agile and DevOps best practices. You’ll also be able to talk to us about your:

• Expert knowledge of continuous integration and deployment practices
• Ability to collaborate with people of all levels of technical ability
• Ability to lead and mentor on industry best practices
• Project Management experience
• Fantastic people skills, including the ability to motivate a team towards a common goal
• Bid work and Pre-Sales Engineering experience

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with prospective and existing customers to define and execute strategies for cloud and DevOps adoption.
• Educate customers and industry stakeholders on the benefits and best practices of cloud-native technologies.
• Lead large, complex public cloud projects, providing strategic direction and selecting appropriate technologies.
• Manage teams of platform engineers and consultants, fostering a positive and collaborative team culture.
• Engage with enterprise clients to understand their unique challenges and deliver tailored solutions.
• Stay up-to-date with the latest trends and emerging technologies, contributing to industry knowledge sharing through blog posts and videos.

Skills

• Platform Engineering: Mastery of designing and implementing scalable, resilient, and secure platforms.
• Automation: Expertise in infrastructure-as-code (IaC) practices, automation tools (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation) and scripting languages (e.g. Python, Ruby).
• Container Orchestration: In-depth knowledge and hands-on experience with Kubernetes and its managed counterparts (EKS, AKS, GKE).
• Public Cloud Expertise: In-depth knowledge of AWS, Azure, or GCP services, architecture, and best practices.
• DevOps Mastery: Excellent knowledge of CI/CD, containerisation, and serverless technologies.
• Networking: Expertise in designing and managing secure, scalable AWS network architectures (VPC, VPN, Load Balancers, Transit Gateway).

Experience

• Leadership on Large Projects: Proven experience leading and delivering large, complex public cloud projects.
• Team Management and Mentorship: Extensive experience leading and managing teams, fostering a collaborative culture, and mentoring team members.
• Enterprise Customer-Facing Experience: Significant experience engaging with enterprise clients, managing relationships, and ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction.
• Continuous Learning and Industry Involvement: Proven commitment to staying up-to-date with the latest trends and contributing to industry knowledge sharing.

Qualifications

• Certification in relevant cloud technologies (AWS, Azure, GCP) at an expert/professional level is highly desirable, e.g.:
• AWS Solutions Architect Professional
• AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty (highly desirable)
• Certification in Kubernetes administration is desirable:
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
• Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKSS)

Why join Appvia?

We are a self-funded, London based startup; providing businesses with a fast and secure way to deploy containerised applications into the cloud.

We are on a mission to enable organisations to make cloud-based software delivery simple and efficient, whilst having the insights into costs, security and cadence. As a company that holds customers at the heart of everything we do, we are looking for candidates that want to make a real change to how Dev and Ops is working in the industry.

With us our customers, like the UK’s Home Office & Bank of England, are harnessing cloud-native technologies, limiting the challenges of infrastructure management and rapidly delivering digital products.

What’s on offer?

⚖️ Work-life balance

• Flexible working hours - because we know life happens outside of work
• Hybrid working - outcomes focused working
• 25 days’ holiday a year, plus bank holidays
• An additional day off for your birthday
• Enhanced maternity and paternity to full pay
• Workplace Nursery Benefit to help working parents

💚 For your well-being

• Full Private Healthcare cover for you with partners and children covered 50%
• Death in Service
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Electric Car Scheme
• Pension plus a salary sacrifice option for even greater savings
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Free hygiene products available in the London office

🧠 Mental health support

• Free therapy through AXA
• Access to the Headspace App
• Trained Mental Health First Aiders

😃 Other fun perks

• Learning budget of £1,000 a year
• Your own MacBook Pro while you work at Appvia
• Dog friendly office
• Wear what makes you comfortable
• Free snacks in the office
• Pool table & ping pong table
• Regular team socials, board game nights, industry meetups and more!

But don’t just take our word for it, you can check out what our Appvians say about us on Glassdoor and by following us on LinkedIn, Twitter and TikTok.

We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and actively encourage, respect, and recognise diversity of thought and background throughout the business. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity, and disability status.

Note: While all roles are active and approved at the time of posting, the dynamic nature of our start-up means some applications may be processed to pipeline talent for future opportunities rather than current openings. We will strive to keep you informed of any changes to the status of your application.