Thorn SDS Ltd
Senior Platform Engineer
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Build the platforms that protect the UK's national security.
Are you an experienced Platform Engineer looking for work that genuinely matters?
We're looking for a Senior Platform Engineer to join a high-performing engineering team delivering secure, resilient platforms that support critical defence and national security capabilities. You'll be working with modern cloud, containerisation and automation technologies on projects where reliability, security and innovation are essential.
This is an opportunity to apply your technical expertise to complex engineering challenges while helping shape the future of secure infrastructure in one of the UK's most important sectors.
About Thorn SDS
Thorn SDS is a specialist Managed Service Provider headquartered in Alton, Hampshire. We partner with organisations across the Space, Defence and Security sectors, connecting exceptional technical talent with some of the UK's most challenging and rewarding engineering programmes.
The Role
Based full-time at a secure site in Hereford, you'll play a key role in designing, building and supporting secure platform services that enable the delivery of mission-critical applications. This role is fully onsite due to the secure nature of the environment and offers the opportunity to work on systems that cannot be accessed remotely.
Working alongside specialists in DevOps, software engineering, cybersecurity and systems engineering, you'll help deliver highly available, scalable and secure infrastructure across modern and legacy environments.
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What You'll Be Doing
- Designing and building secure, automated and scalable platform environments.
- Managing infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code, including Terraform, Ansible or Pulumi.
- Creating and improving CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI, Jenkins or Azure DevOps.
- Working closely with software engineering teams to deliver reliable, repeatable deployment environments.
- Deploying and supporting Kubernetes, OpenShift, Docker and other container technologies.
- Monitoring platform health, performance and security using tools such as Prometheus, Grafana and ELK.
- Ensuring infrastructure complies with defence and security standards and related frameworks.
- Contributing to platform hardening, threat modelling and incident response activities.
- Supporting the migration of legacy systems into modern, secure platforms across connected and air-gapped environments.
What We're Looking For
You'll be an experienced Platform Engineer, DevOps Engineer or Site Reliability Engineer who enjoys solving complex technical challenges.
You'll ideally have experience with:
- Linux and/or Windows administration.
- Scripting and automation using Bash, Python or PowerShell.
- Cloud platforms including AWS, Azure, MODCloud or private cloud environments.
- Kubernetes, OpenShift, Docker and modern container platforms.
- Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD tooling.
- Secure platform engineering and defence or enterprise security standards.
- Agile delivery environments.
Desirable Experience
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We're particularly interested if you also have experience with:
- CKA, CKAD, AWS/Azure DevOps Engineer, CISSP, Security+ or similar certifications.
- HashiCorp Vault, Istio or Zero Trust architectures.
- Secure enclaves, cross-domain solutions or air-gapped environments.
- Defence, MOD, intelligence or other high-assurance engineering environments.
What's In It For You?
Alongside a competitive salary of £65,000–£75,000, you'll receive:
- 25 days' annual leave plus Bank Holidays.
- Employer pension contributions.
- Group Life Insurance.
- Dental Cashback Plan.
- Health Cashback Plan.
- Wellbeing services including GP access, physiotherapy and lifestyle savings.
- Thorn Wellbeing Support Contribution.
- Cycle to Work Scheme.
- Funded training, certifications and ongoing professional development.
- The opportunity to work on nationally significant programmes using modern technologies.
Security Requirements
Applicants must have the right to work in the UK and either already hold, or be eligible to obtain, a high level of UK National Security Clearance.
Please note that, due to the nature of our work, nationality, previous nationalities and country of birth may affect eligibility for certain security-cleared positions.
Apply Now
If you're an experienced Platform Engineer looking to work on technically challenging projects that make a real difference to UK national security, we'd love to hear from you.
Apply today and take the next step in your engineering career with Thorn SDS.
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