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Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineer | Kubernetes | Distributed Systems | Python / Go | Must Hold or Be Eligible for SC Clearance
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Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineer | Kubernetes | Distributed Systems | Python / Go | Must Hold or Be Eligible for SC Clearance
Salary: £90,000 - £105,000 + RSUs
Start: ASAP
Working Model: Hybrid 1-2 days p/w in London (in-office for secure work and on-call)
Location: London, UK
Relocation: Support available for candidates outside London
Eligibility: Must hold active UK SC clearance, OR be eligible to obtain it (British Passport, ILR, or Settled Status) (Non-Negotiable)
🚨 Non-Negotiables - Please only apply if you have ALL of the following 🚨
Core technologies:
- Kubernetes and containerisation (Docker, orchestration at scale)
- Hands-on production infrastructure experience
- Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible, or similar)
- Proficient in Python, Go, Java, or a comparable backend language
- CI/CD pipeline design and delivery
Environment:
- Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, high-autonomy environment
- Proven track record building and deploying production systems, not just maintaining them
- Able to own reliability, monitoring, and operations end-to-end
- Happy to participate in an on-call rotation
- Eligibility to hold UK SC clearance (British Passport, ILR, or Settled Status)
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Key skills:
- Production-grade infrastructure design, deployment, and scaling
- Strong Kubernetes and containerisation depth
- Modern automation and IaC tooling
- Solid understanding of distributed systems
- On-call and incident response experience
- Confident debugging and optimising across the stack
- Able to work UK hours and hybrid in London
Role Overview
We're partnered with a publicly listed technology company building mission-critical software for some of the most important institutions in the world. This is a forward-deployed infrastructure role where you'll operate at startup speed inside a high-security, high-impact environment - owning reliability, deployments, and automation for systems where uptime genuinely matters.
This is a hands-on role focused on production infrastructure, system reliability, and scaling operations, working closely with product and delivery teams in a high-ownership setting with minimal bureaucracy.
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Key Responsibilities
- Build, operate, and maintain high-performance, scalable, and reliable production infrastructure
- Own reliability end-to-end including monitoring, alerting, config management, and upgrades
- Deploy new products and run migrations across production environments
- Lead automation efforts to reduce manual toil and improve resilience
- Debug, harden, and optimise services with a focus on long-term reliability
- Participate in an on-call rotation (roughly every 5-6 weeks) for production support
- Partner with delivery and product teams on sensible, scalable systems design
Nice to Have
- Background in defence tech or another high-complexity technical organisation
- Experience at a major cloud or big-tech company
- Exposure to modern LLM / AI tooling
- Distributed systems design experience
- Prior SRE or on-call rotation ownership
If you've built and run production infrastructure at scale and want to work on systems that actually matter, let's talk.
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