CleanTech Talent
Principal Platform Engineer
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Principal Platform Engineer
Bristol - Hybrid - Permanent - 3-days per week onsite
SC Clearance Eligibility Required
£95k+
CleanTech Talent are working with a UK engineering team building distributed systems that operate at the edge, where connectivity is unreliable, compute is constrained, and platforms need to keep working when conditions are not ideal.
The focus is on practical engineering across the full platform stack, from the operating system layer through to workload orchestration, lifecycle management, and observability. They design and build their platforms from start to finish, with a strong emphasis on ownership and engineering quality.
The Role – Principal Platform Engineer
You will take ownership of the platform layer across complex distributed systems that operate in environments where stable connectivity, consistent cluster membership, and a persistent central control plane cannot be assumed.
This is not standard cloud or enterprise infrastructure. It is about building platforms that tolerate disconnection, constrained resources, and real-world operational conditions where reliability is not optional.
You will work closely with a core engineering team, shaping architecture and also delivering hands-on where needed.
What You Will Be Doing
- Contributing to the architecture of the edge platform end-to-end, from the operating system layer through to workload orchestration, lifecycle management, and observability
- Helping shape the edge operating system strategy, including immutable, signed, minimal-footprint base images suitable for constrained and field-deployed hardware
- Designing and implementing remote orchestration mechanisms that are robust to denied, disrupted, intermittent, and limited connectivity
- Working on security baselines for edge nodes, including secure boot, hardware-rooted identity, attestation, and runtime isolation of workloads
- Building observability, logging, and telemetry capabilities that work when bandwidth is scarce and devices are intermittently reachable
- Designing zero-touch onboarding and provisioning flows so devices come online securely without manual configuration in the field
- Developing infrastructure-as-code, GitOps, and automation patterns across the edge fleet and the supporting control plane
- Sharing knowledge with platform and software engineers across the organisation, lifting overall engineering capability through example and collaboration
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What We Are Looking For
- Experience designing, building, and operating platforms for distributed or edge environments
- Solid experience with container orchestration tools and a practical understanding of where they work well at the edge and where they do not
- Hands-on experience with immutable infrastructure patterns, signed images, and reproducible builds
- Strong infrastructure-as-code background using Terraform, Ansible, or equivalent, alongside modern CI/CD
- Practical experience with secure boot, TPM/HSM, remote attestation, and certificate-based device identity
- Strong software engineering fundamentals sufficient to build platform tooling and contribute to core components
- Experience designing systems that operate correctly through network partitions, link loss, and long offline periods
- Proven ability to influence engineering direction and operate autonomously in complex and ambiguous environments
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About You
You are likely someone who has built platforms that other engineers genuinely rely on, in environments where disconnection, disruption, and constrained resources are normal operating conditions.
You are comfortable working at a detailed technical level when needed, but you also think in terms of systems and outcomes.
You test assumptions early, design with failure in mind, and care about building robust abstractions that allow application teams to deploy securely without needing to understand the underlying orchestration model.
The Package
- Salary from £95,000, open for the right person
- Bristol-based, hybrid, three days per week on site
- Discretionary performance bonus
- Annual salary review
- Flexible start/finish hours
Clearance
Candidates must be eligible for UK SC clearance and hold the right to work in the UK. Existing clearance is not required.
CleanTech Talent are working as a Hiring Partner, and our client's name will be shared at the first conversation. Apply or reach out to Jim Merryfield or Daniel Salway at Cleantech Talent for more information.
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