Senior Data Platform Engineer

Job description

Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations. We build and operate ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations. In 2024, Aker Systems won the Breakthrough Culture Awards highlighting growth companies putting culture first. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as a ‘One to Watch’ on the Sunday Times Tech Track. The Company was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020; winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories. We encourage people of all different backgrounds and identities to apply. We are committed to maintaining an inclusive, and supportive place for you to do your very best work. Due to the nature of the project, **UK Government Security Check (SC) clearance is required**. We are looking for a **Senior Data Platform Engineer** to design, build and operate secure, scalable and reliable data platform capabilities across client delivery projects in the **public sector and utilities**. You will work closely with Data Engineers, Software Engineers, Architects, DevOps Engineers and client stakeholders to develop and maintain **cloud-native data platforms supporting batch, real-time streaming, analytical and operational workloads**. This is a hands-on engineering role focused on building reliable platform services, automating infrastructure and deployments, supporting production environments and contributing to technical design decisions. Strong experience with **cloud platforms, distributed systems and real-time streaming technologies** is highly desirable. **Key Responsibilities** - Design, develop, test and deploy **data platform services and components**. - Build and maintain platform capabilities supporting **batch and real-time data workloads**. - Develop and operate distributed data services using **Kafka, Kinesis, Spark, Flink or equivalent technologies**. - Build and maintain cloud-native data platform capabilities using **AWS and/or Azure**. - Support data ingestion, processing, storage and integration across multiple systems. - Develop and maintain **data models, schemas and platform data structures**. - Support schema evolution, data quality and data integrity across distributed platforms. - Integrate data platforms with relational and NoSQL databases. - Develop automated testing and validation for platform services and data processing components. - Implement and maintain **CI/CD pipelines** for data platform workloads. - Use **Infrastructure as Code** to create repeatable and maintainable environments. - Support Docker and Kubernetes-based platform environments. - Monitor platform services and investigate failures, performance issues and operational problems. - Participate in incident investigation and **root cause analysis**. - Support platform performance, scalability, resilience and availability improvements. - Contribute to platform security, governance and operational readiness. - Work closely with Software Engineers, Data Engineers, DevOps and Architects. - Participate in technical design discussions, code reviews and engineering standards. - Contribute to continuous improvement of platform engineering practices. **Essential Technical Skills & Experience** - Strong commercial experience as a **Senior Data Platform Engineer, Senior Data Engineer, Platform Engineer, Software Engineer or similar**. - Strong hands-on experience building and operating **cloud-native data platforms**. - Strong programming experience using **Java and/or Python**. - Hands-on experience with **real-time streaming and event-driven architectures**, including Kafka, Kinesis or equivalent. - Experience with distributed data processing technologies such as **Spark, Flink, Kafka Streams** or equivalent. - Strong experience with **AWS and/or Azure** cloud environments. - Experience with cloud services such as **S3, Glue, Lambda, RDS, Athena, EC2** or Azure equivalents. - Strong understanding of **data platform architecture, data pipelines and distributed processing**. - Experience with **relational and NoSQL databases**. - Strong SQL skills and understanding of data modelling and schema design. - Experience with **CI/CD and DevOps practices**. - Experience using **Terraform or equivalent Infrastructure as Code technologies**. - Experience with **Docker and/or Kubernetes**. - Experience using **GitHub/GitLab** and modern source control practices. - Experience implementing monitoring, logging and **observability** for platform services. - Experience supporting production systems and resolving technical and operational issues. - Understanding of platform security, resilience, scalability and availability. - Experience working within **Agile and/or DevOps delivery environments**. - **Desirable:** Helm, ArgoCD, Airflow, dbt, Bash, Ansible, Packer, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK or Datadog. - Experience working within **public sector, utilities or other regulated environments** is advantageous. **Data Platform Engineering** As a Senior Data Platform Engineer, you will take ownership of complex platform engineering activities within your client delivery team. You will: - Build and maintain reliable **data platform components and services**. - Contribute to technical design and implementation decisions. - Develop reusable and maintainable platform patterns. - Support data ingestion, processing, storage and integration capabilities. - Identify platform risks relating to **performance, scalability, security and reliability**. - Contribute to platform performance tuning and optimisation. - Participate in code reviews and promote clean, maintainable engineering practices. - Support production troubleshooting and root cause analysis. - Share knowledge and support less experienced engineers. - Contribute to improving platform automation, reliability and engineering standards. **Cloud, Infrastructure & Automation** You will work across modern cloud and infrastructure technologies, including: - **AWS and/or Azure** cloud services. - Infrastructure as Code using **Terraform or equivalent**. - **Docker and Kubernetes** containerised environments. - CI/CD using GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins or equivalent. - Automated provisioning and configuration. - Monitoring, logging, alerting and observability. - Platform security and access controls. - Resilience, backup and disaster recovery considerations. **Experience & Qualifications** You should have **5+ years of relevant professional experience** across Data Engineering, Data Platform Engineering, Software Engineering, Platform Engineering or a similar technical discipline. For a Senior-level appointment, you should demonstrate strong **hands-on technical capability, ownership of complex platform engineering activities and the ability to work independently within client delivery environments**. **About You** You are a **hands-on Data Platform Engineer who enjoys building and operating the infrastructure and services that make modern data platforms work reliably in production**. You are comfortable working across **cloud platforms, streaming, distributed systems, data processing, Infrastructure as Code and containerisation**. You understand that effective data platforms need to be **secure, scalable, observable, resilient and maintainable**, not simply capable of processing data. You take ownership of your work, enjoy solving complex technical problems and work well with engineers across different disciplines. You are pragmatic, technically curious and focused on delivering **reliable platform capabilities that create measurable value for clients**. Experience working within **public sector, utilities or other complex and regulated environments** would be highly advantageous. Aker Systems Attributes At Aker we work as a team; we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help to solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion. In return, we offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, company paid medical insurance and life assurance, pension scheme, annual training allowance, wellbeing allowance, virtual GP, Employee Assistance plan and more. Equal Opportunities Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.