Backend and Platform Engineer UK

Backend & Platform Engineer Central London | Hybrid | AWS / Infrastructure / Software Engineering Hiring via aiRecruitTalent Location: Central London, United Kingdom Work Model: Hybrid — 1 day per week in the office Employment Type: Full-Time Function: Backend Engineering | Platform Engineering | Cloud Infrastructure | Software Development Industry: Technology | Software | Cloud Platforms Experience Level: Senior 💰 Compensation £90,000 – £130,000 base salary + excellent bonus package Final compensation will depend on experience, technical expertise, and overall background. ⚠️ IMPORTANT ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENT Candidates must already be based in the UK and have the right to work in the UK. UK-based candidates only Must be able to travel to Central London once per week No visa sponsorship available No relocation package available 🌟 About the Role Our client is a growing and profitable technology business looking for an experienced Backend & Platform Engineer to join its engineering organisation. This is an exciting opportunity for a strong Software Engineer who has developed significant expertise in AWS, cloud infrastructure, production systems, and platform engineering. The role is approximately: 60% AWS / Infrastructure 40% Software Development The software-development component will primarily focus on Python or Java. The ideal candidate will be someone who started from a strong software-engineering foundation and has progressively taken on significant ownership of cloud infrastructure, production environments, reliability, deployment, and platform engineering. This role is particularly suited to engineers who have worked in smaller or highly autonomous engineering teams, where they have had genuine responsibility for building, operating, troubleshooting, and improving production infrastructure. 🎯 Key Responsibilities ☁️ AWS & Cloud Infrastructure Own and continuously improve AWS infrastructure supporting production applications. Design, build, and maintain reliable cloud environments. Manage AWS services, infrastructure architecture, networking, security, and operational tooling. Improve scalability, resilience, availability, and performance of cloud systems. Monitor infrastructure health and proactively identify potential issues. Optimise AWS infrastructure for performance and cost efficiency. Support cloud architecture decisions as the technology platform evolves. 🏗️ Platform Engineering Build and maintain internal platforms and infrastructure capabilities that enable engineering teams to deliver effectively. Develop automation for infrastructure provisioning, deployment, monitoring, and operational processes. Improve developer experience through better tooling and platform capabilities. Establish consistent engineering and infrastructure standards. Support reliable, repeatable, and secure deployment processes. Identify opportunities to reduce manual operational work through automation. 💻 Backend Software Engineering Design, develop, test, and maintain production-grade backend software. Build scalable APIs, services, integrations, and application components. Contribute primarily using Python or Java. Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code. Participate in architectural and technical design discussions. Review code and contribute to engineering standards. Balance new feature development with reliability, maintainability, and technical debt. 🚀 Production Ownership Take genuine ownership of applications and infrastructure in production. Monitor system performance, availability, and reliability. Diagnose and resolve complex production issues. Conduct root-cause analysis and implement preventative improvements. Improve incident response and operational processes. Ensure systems are resilient and capable of supporting business growth. 🔄 CI/CD & DevOps Build and improve CI/CD pipelines. Automate application and infrastructure deployments. Support infrastructure-as-code practices. Improve release reliability and deployment speed. Integrate testing, security, monitoring, and quality controls into delivery pipelines. Work closely with other engineers to establish efficient development-to-production workflows. 🔐 Security & Reliability Implement secure AWS and cloud-infrastructure practices. Apply appropriate IAM, networking, secrets-management, and access controls. Support vulnerability management and infrastructure hardening. Improve system resilience and disaster-recovery capabilities. Ensure production infrastructure meets appropriate security and operational standards. 📊 Observability & Performance Implement and improve monitoring, logging, alerting, and observability. Track application and infrastructure performance. Establish meaningful operational metrics. Identify performance bottlenecks and scalability constraints. Use data to continuously improve reliability and system efficiency. 🤝 Engineering Collaboration Work closely with software engineers, product teams, and technical leadership. Translate business and engineering requirements into practical technical solutions. Provide technical guidance around cloud architecture and infrastructure. Share knowledge and best practices across the engineering team. Contribute to an engineering culture based on ownership, quality, and continuous improvement. Requirements

• 🧠 Ideal Candidate Profile
• The strongest candidates will have:
• Strong professional experience as a Software Engineer
• Backend Engineer
• Platform Engineer
• Cloud Engineer
• or similar.
• Significant hands-on experience with AWS.
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure and production systems.
• Strong software-development skills in Python or Java.
• Experience taking genuine ownership of production infrastructure.
• Experience working in a small
• agile
• or highly autonomous engineering environment.
• Strong understanding of backend architecture and distributed systems.
• Experience with infrastructure automation and CI/CD.
• Strong problem-solving and troubleshooting skills.
• A strong sense of ownership and accountability.
• Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively with other engineers.
• ⭐ Technical Skills
• ☁️ Cloud
• AWS | EC2 | ECS/EKS | Lambda | S3 | RDS | VPC | IAM | CloudWatch
• 💻 Software Engineering
• Python | Java | REST APIs | Microservices | Backend Systems | Distributed Systems
• 🏗️ Infrastructure
• Infrastructure as Code | Terraform / CloudFormation | Networking | Linux | Containers | Docker
• 🔄 DevOps
• CI/CD | Git | GitHub Actions / GitLab CI / Jenkins | Deployment Automation
• 📊 Observability
• Monitoring | Logging | Metrics | Alerting | Distributed Tracing | Performance Optimisation
• 🔐 Security
• IAM | Secrets Management | Network Security | Infrastructure Hardening | Secure Development
• 🎯 What Makes This Role Different?
• This is not simply a backend-development role and it is not a traditional infrastructure role.
• The ideal engineer sits directly at the intersection of:
• Software Engineering
• AWS / Cloud Infrastructure
• Platform Engineering
• Production Ownership
• You should be comfortable writing production code and getting into the AWS console
• infrastructure configuration
• deployment pipelines
• monitoring
• networking
• and production incidents when required.
• The role is particularly attractive to engineers who have developed their infrastructure expertise organically by being given real ownership of production systems rather than working exclusively within a narrowly defined infrastructure function.
• 📊 Key Performance Indicators
• Success in the role may be measured through:
• AWS platform reliability
• System availability and uptime
• Production incident reduction
• Infrastructure scalability
• Deployment reliability
• CI/CD performance
• Application performance
• Infrastructure cost optimisation
• Security and compliance improvements
• Engineering productivity
• Automation of operational processes
• Successful delivery of software initiatives
• Reduction in technical debt and operational risk
• 💰 Compensation & Benefits
• Base Salary
• £90
• 000 – £130
• 000 per year
• Additional Compensation
• Excellent bonus package
• depending on background and experience.
• Potential benefits may include:
• Competitive base salary
• Performance-based bonus
• Hybrid working
• Central London office
• Professional development
• Technology and certification opportunities
• Pension
• Health and wellbeing benefits
• Opportunity to work within a growing
• profitable technology business
• Significant technical ownership and career growth Apply Now: https://www.airecruittalent.com/jobs/ccc02229-85a3-4c4d-897e-e05cb46e9699