Principal Platform Engineer

Are you ready to take on complex technical challenges at the forefront of cyber and platform engineering? At Leonardo, our Principal Platform Engineers are hands-on experts who shape the design, integration, and delivery of secure platforms that keep our customers’ missions running. 
 
Your work at Leonardo UK will see you take the lead in solving customer problems in an agile, innovative and team-centric manner. The role may involve a blended hybrid working model, with a mixture of working from home and working on site at one of our Leonardo offices to ensure close collaboration with the wider team and with our customers. 

This role is focused on delivering, maintaining, and improving platform and systems engineering solutions that underpin critical defence, government and public sector services. 
 
What you will do as a Principal Platform Engineer

• Act as the technical authority on one or more platform engineering domains (e.g. cloud, virtualisation, automation, networking, or cyber tooling) providing specialist domain expertise to projects and programmes. 

• Lead the design and implementation of secure platforms across on-premise, hybrid, and cloud environments. 

• Capture, analyse, and interpret complex customer requirements to drive system design and architecture. 

• Develop high- and low-level designs, ensuring alignment with secure-by-design principles. 

• Take ownership of technical delivery within work packages, including planning, estimation, and progress reporting. 

• Mentor, coach, and develop junior and senior engineers, raising technical capability across the community. 

• Provide input to technology strategies, feasibility studies, and innovation projects. 

• Engage with internal and external stakeholders, presenting technical solutions and justifying design decisions. 

• Extensive technical expertise across multiple platform domains, with a track record of delivering secure solutions. 

• The ability to balance hands-on engineering with technical leadership and mentorship. 

• A problem-solving mindset, able to innovate and recommend the best approach for complex challenges. 

• Windows and Linux operating systems 

• Virtualisation platforms (VMware, Hyper-V) and containerisation (Kubernetes, Docker) 

• Networking concepts (TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, firewalls) 

• Automation and scripting (e.g. PowerShell, Bash, Python, Ansible, Terraform) 

• Knowledge of cyber security controls and accreditation requirements 

• Experience across the systems engineering lifecycle 

• Expertise with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) and Infrastructure as Code (CloudFormation, Terraform) 

• Experience integrating enterprise services (Active Directory, PKI, monitoring, SIEM) 

• Hands-on use of DevSecOps tools and CI/CD pipelines 

• Industry certifications (VMware VCP, AWS Solutions Architect, Microsoft, Kubernetes, or equivalent) 

• Experience presenting at technical forums or contributing to technical standards 

This role is subject to pre-employment screening in line with the UK Government’s Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS). An additional range of Personnel Security Controls referred to as National Security Vetting (NSV) may apply, this could include meeting the eligibility requirements for The Security Check (SC) or Developed Vetting (DV). For more information and guidance please visit: https://careers.uk.leonardo.com/gb/en/security-and-vetting 
 
Location 

This role can be based at one of our UK sites , Bristol , with hybrid/custom working options where appropriate.