Principal Cloud Engineer

Package: £76,500 - £100,000 (salary dependent on experience) + Benefits

Security Clearance: Due to the nature of the projects involved, applicants must be eligible to obtain Security Check (SC) Clearance as a minimum.

• 37-hour working week.
• Hybrid working with an average of 3 days per week onsite.

The Role

Our client is a leading UK technology and engineering organisation operating at the forefront of defence, security, digital transformation and advanced research. As a Principal AWS Cloud Engineer, you will define and drive cloud strategy, architect resilient and secure AWS-based solutions, and provide technical direction across multiple engineering teams.

Acting as the highest level of technical escalation, you will play a pivotal role in shaping engineering best practices, mentoring engineers at all levels, and ensuring the successful delivery of enterprise-scale cloud solutions. This is a hands-on leadership role requiring deep AWS expertise and a passion for driving technical excellence.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect complex, multi-region, highly available AWS environments aligned to long-term business objectives and product roadmaps.
• Evaluate emerging AWS services and third-party technologies to enhance capability, efficiency and time-to-market.
• Guide technical decision-making across engineering teams and ensure successful integration between infrastructure and software development.
• Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code solutions using Terraform, AWS CDK and/or Pulumi.
• Design internal developer platforms and enterprise-grade CI/CD frameworks that enable secure and autonomous software delivery.
• Drive AWS cost optimisation initiatives and improve performance across distributed systems, microservices, databases and network infrastructure.
• Act as a trusted advisor to engineering leadership and contribute to cloud strategy, governance and architectural standards.
• Mentor senior, mid-level and junior engineers, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and operational excellence.

Essential Experience

• Extensive experience designing, implementing and operating AWS cloud infrastructure.
• Expert-level knowledge of AWS services, including networking technologies such as Transit Gateway and Direct Connect, compute, storage, security and governance.
• Strong expertise in Infrastructure as Code and configuration management.
• Software engineering background with advanced knowledge of Python, Go, Java or Node.js.
• Demonstrable experience leading large-scale technical initiatives and influencing engineering strategy across multiple teams.
• Proven track record designing, deploying and supporting large-scale distributed systems and microservices architectures.
• Strong stakeholder management and the ability to drive technical consensus across complex organisations.

Essential Qualifications

• AWS Associate Certification minimum (Professional level certifications highly desirable)