Senior Platform Engineer (12 month FTC)

Fixed Term Contract for 12 months

Our world-leading Time & Frequency department are seeking a Senior Platform Engineer with experience in VMware technologies, VDI platforms, automation, systems administration, and infrastructure resilience.

This is an exceptional opportunity to join the global authority in precision timing at a defining moment for UK digital infrastructure.

Backed by a government investment of £180 million in the National Timing Centre (NTC) programme, we are developing a world-first resilient time distribution capability that will provide industry with a robust complement to satellite systems (such as GPS) – which are increasingly vulnerable to disruption from solar storms, jamming and spoofing. This will underpin essential services, including

• Telecommunications,
• Online banking,
• Emergency response,
• Transport networks, and
• Wider digital and data-driven operations.

Together, these services form the backbone of modern society - and your leadership will help ensure they remain secure, reliable and robust even if global navigation satellite systems fail.

Key Responsibilities

As a Senior Platform Engineer specialising in Virtualisation, Windows, and Security, you will support and maintain critical infrastructure across multiple customer environments, with a strong focus on automation and DevOps practices. Working as part of a specialist team, you will design, deploy, administer, and optimise virtualisation platforms, end-user computing solutions, servers, and supporting infrastructure services, including orchestration services (Kubernetes) running on virtual platforms.

Key responsibilities include:

• Administering, maintaining, and optimising VMware vCenter and vSAN environments.

• Supporting and developing VDI platforms.

• Managing Windows Server environments, including Active Directory, Trusts, DNS, Group Policy, PKI, certificate services, and security hardening.

• Designing, implementing, and supporting resilient, highly available infrastructure solutions, while troubleshooting complex infrastructure, platform, and network issues.

• Delivering upgrades, migrations, patching, and lifecycle management activities.

• Developing automation and orchestration capabilities using scripting and Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

• Supporting enterprise security initiatives, including privileged access management, monitoring, logging, and data protection.

• Producing technical documentation, operational procedures, and support runbooks.

• Contributing to disaster recovery, business continuity, and redundancy planning.

• Travelling to sites as required to support deployment, implementation, and operational activities.