Platform Engineer - Developer Platform & DevOps Tooling

Viridien (www.viridiengroup.com) is an advanced technology, digital and Earth data company that pushes the boundaries of science for a more prosperous and sustainable future. With our ingenuity, drive and deep curiosity we discover new insights, innovations, and solutions that efficiently and responsibly resolve complex natural resource, digital, energy transition and infrastructure challenges.

Job Details

Viridien is seeking a Platform Engineer - Developer Platform & DevOps to help create the tools, services, and automation that enable engineering teams to develop, deploy, and operate software across a large-scale HPC platform.

This is a platform engineering role that combines software development, DevOps, and platform operations. We are looking for someone with a developer background who wants to grow their platform engineering skills while writing maintainable code, supporting production services, and improving the platforms that engineering teams rely on day to day.

You will work across CI/CD systems, GitLab, Kubernetes services, Puppet-managed environments, observability tooling, and OpenStack-backed infrastructure. OpenStack and AI-related experience are useful but not required.

About The Team

You will join a team focused on platform engineering and developer tooling, supporting scalable software development, reliable software delivery, and large-scale compute environments.

The team works closely with software engineering, infrastructure, operations, and research teams to build practical tools and platform capabilities that help developers ship and operate software more effectively.

Key Responsibilities

Software & Tooling Development

• Help design, build, and maintain internal tools, services, APIs, and automation for engineering teams.
• Contribute improvements to developer workflows across build, test, release, deployment, and operational processes.
• Develop reliable, maintainable software that integrates with existing platform and infrastructure systems, with support from experienced engineers where needed.

DevOps & Platform Integration

• Work with CI/CD pipelines, containerised environments, and Kubernetes-based platforms.
• Help automate repetitive operational workflows and improve deployment reliability.
• Contribute to infrastructure-as-code, configuration management, and platform automation where needed.

Platform Support

• Support key engineering platforms and services, including GitLab, Kubernetes, Puppet-managed environments, and OpenStack-backed infrastructure.
• Improve platform workflows through software, automation, documentation, and operational feedback.
• Work closely with platform owners and users to reduce toil, improve reliability, and turn requirements into practical improvements.

Reliability, Reporting & Service Health

• Contribute to tooling for monitoring, logging, debugging, and operational visibility.
• Ensure uptime, availability, and operational readiness of Kubernetes-based services.
• Assist with diagnosing complex issues across application, platform, and infrastructure boundaries.
• Contribute to reliability, performance, and scalability improvements for platform services.
• Produce clear reporting on platform health, delivery status, incidents, and improvement work.
• Help define, track, and communicate relevant KPIs for developer workflows, platform reliability, and service performance.
• Follow established processes and procedures when working with live production environments.
• Turn operational trends and recurring issues into practical backlog items and engineering improvements.

Collaboration & Architecture

• Work closely with software engineers, platform engineers, and infrastructure teams.
• Participate in architecture and design discussions for developer tooling and platform services.
• Learn from senior engineers and contribute increasingly independently over time.

Qualifications

Required

• Software development experience in one or more modern programming languages; Go, C++, Python, and scripting experience are especially useful.
• Experience building or contributing to tools, services, APIs, platforms, or distributed systems.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, release processes, or deployment automation.
• Practical experience with Linux and containers, with exposure to Kubernetes or similar orchestration platforms.
• Ability to write maintainable code and willingness to learn how to operate it in real environments.
• Good debugging and problem-solving skills, with an interest in understanding issues across software and platform layers.
• Comfortable collaborating across development, platform, and operations teams.

Desirable

• Experience with AI-powered CLI tools, reusable agent/AI skills, agent-based or AI-assisted developer workflows, and LLM-based tooling.
• Experience with observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Thanos, or similar.
• Experience with infrastructure automation, infrastructure-as-code, or deployment tooling such as Terraform or Helm.
• Experience with Puppet, Ansible, or similar configuration management tooling.
• Exposure to OpenStack, cloud infrastructure, and large-scale compute environments.
• Familiarity with authentication and access control systems such as OIDC.
• Experience supporting high-performance, data-intensive, or research-oriented workloads.

Why work with us?

• £40,000-£46,000 per annum depending on experience

• Highly attractive bonus scheme

• Initial 22 days annual leave with future increases, complemented by a flexible buying and selling holiday program

• Company pension with generous employer contribution

• Wellbeing Unmind app – puts you in control of your mental health

• A flexible benefits platform with numerous discount schemes - gym membership, restaurants, cinema tickets, and much more!

• Regular social club events, spontaneous reward events throughout the year

• Cycle purchase scheme

• Flexible Private Medical & Dental care programmes

• Sponsorship of visas/comprehensive relocation packages

• Bank Holiday Swap - our holiday swap program allows you to change it for another day of your choice!

• Relaxed dress code policy

Learning and Development
At Viridien, we foster a culture of continuous learning and provide tailored training programs through our Learning Hub, designed to enhance technical, commercial, and personal growth.
We Care About The Environment
We encourage and actively support a strong sense of community, through volunteering and various company initiatives, as well as a strong company commitment to protecting our environment through sustainable solutions, energy saving and waste reduction enterprises.

Our Hiring Process

At Viridien, we are committed to delivering a respectful, inclusive, and transparent recruitment experience.

Due to the high volume of applications we receive, we may not be able to provide individual feedback to every applicant. Only candidates whose qualifications closely match the role criteria will be contacted for an interview. We do, however, aim to share personalized feedback with those who progress to the first round of interviews and beyond.

We are also dedicated to ensuring that our hiring process accessible to all. If you require any reasonable adjustments to fully participate in the application or interview stages, please don’t hesitate to contact your recruiter directly.

We see things differently. Diversity fuels our innovation, we value the unique ways in which we differ, and we are committed to equal employment opportunities for all professionals.