Junior Platform Engineer

At the UK Data Archive, home to the UK’s largest collection of social science survey data, we are on a mission to become a world-class repository for cross-disciplinary data. Central to our strategy is the adoption of modern software engineering practices such as testing, security, and building in quality during the development.

We are looking for a Junior Platform Engineer who will be instrumental in achieving these goals by helping to transform our organisational culture and mature our AWS infrastructure. Your role will encompass assisting in the design, maintenance, and optimization of our deployment infrastructure with a focus on automation. You will share ownership with the development team for the development of secure CI/CD pipelines, implementing infrastructure-as-code, and fostering a learning environment within the team.

Duties of the Role
You will play a pivotal role in spearheading the transformation of our organisational culture towards a DevOps mindset. Your involvement will be instrumental in shaping how our AWS infrastructure is architected and managed, ensuring that it efficiently supports our software development life cycle (SDLC). In addition, you will be instrumental in a major cloud migration project during 2025.

Your core responsibilities will include designing, maintaining, and optimising the deployment infrastructure alongside the development team. You will have a keen focus on automation, ensuring that all aspects of the SDLC that can be automated, are automated, to facilitate continuous integration and rapid development and deployment cycles.

You will also be responsible for ensuring the security of the software development infrastructure. This includes implementing robust security policies, conducting regular security audits, and ensuring compliance with industry standards.

As the DevOps champion, you will be instrumental in guiding the team towards an infrastructure-as-code (IaC) model, employing technologies such as AWS CDK, and inculcating a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility among developers, operations, and other stakeholders.

You will play a crucial role in advancing the organisation's development and operational processes, promoting agility, scalability, observability, and security through automation, and fostering a culture of collaboration.

A full list of duties and responsibilities can be found within the job pack.

Qualifications and Skills
Ideally coming a software engineering background, you should possess knowledge in AWS cloud services. Knowledge of AWS CDK infrastructure automation tooling, and CI/CD pipeline creation and management using GitHub Actions is essential. Experience with containerization technologies like Docker is essential, while orchestration tools such as Kubernetes is preferable. Proficiency in scripting languages (Bash) is essential, while Python is desirable.

Knowledge of security best practices, including an understanding of compliance standards and security audit procedures, is crucial. You should exhibit an understanding of infrastructure-as-code (IaC) principles and have a collaborative mindset to work within a cross-functional team.

Exceptional analytical skills, eagerness to learn and adapt, and the ability to foster a culture of shared responsibility and continuous improvement are vital. Being comfortable with a Linux environment is highly desired.

This post is fixed term until 31/03/2030.

Please use the 'Apply' button to read further information about this role including the full job description and person specification which outlines the full duties, skills, qualifications and experience needed. You will also find details of how to make your application here.

Our website http://www.essex.ac.uk contains more information about the University of Essex. If you have a disability and would like information in a different format, please email resourcing@essex.ac.uk.

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