Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineer | Kubernetes | Distributed Sy

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)

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.

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.