Platform Operations Engineer (Hybrid Infrastructure)

Platform Operations Engineer (Hybrid Infrastructure) Role Overview The Platform Operations Engineer supports on-premises and hybrid infrastructure platforms that underpin mission-critical systems. This role focuses on platform reliability, operational stability, and infrastructure improvement in a government or regulated environment. The engineer will work with an existing internal team and L1 vendor engineers to oversee day-to-day operational support, ensure timely resolution of incidents and issues, and provide deeper technical analysis when required. The role also includes technical and security governance responsibilities, including reviewing technical changes, supporting service request (SR) review and approval, and ensuring infrastructure changes and operations align with operational, security, and architectural requirements. This role supports a multi-year technology refresh programme while maintaining stable day-to-day operations with minimal downtime. It also includes technical project coordination responsibilities such as planning, tracking dependencies, managing risks and issues, and driving follow-up across internal teams and vendors to support the agency’s longer-term transition towards cloud and hybrid infrastructure. Key Responsibilities 1. Operational Support and Maintenance • Work with L1 vendor engineers and the internal team to oversee day-to-day operational support and maintenance of critical infrastructure platforms across on-premises and hybrid environments. 2. Infrastructure Platform Oversight • Provide technical oversight across compute, storage, virtualisation, operating systems, backup, disaster recovery (DR), high availability (HA), and related infrastructure platforms. 3. Incident Management • Lead incident management for complex issues, including technical deep dives, root cause analysis, recovery planning, and timely resolution follow-up. 4. Vendor Management and Coordination • Manage and coordinate vendor activities to ensure operational tasks, incidents, service requests, and technical deliverables are completed effectively and within expected timelines. 5. Technical Review and Governance • Review and assess technical changes, service requests (SRs), implementation plans, and recovery approaches to ensure they are practical, supportable, and aligned with operational, security, and architectural requirements. 6. Security and Compliance Support • Support technical and security governance activities, including change review, risk awareness, compliance alignment, and operational readiness checks. 7. Infrastructure Modernisation • Support infrastructure modernisation and the multi-year technology refresh programme while maintaining stable day-to-day operations with minimal downtime. 8. Project Coordination • Plan, coordinate, and track technical infrastructure activities across internal teams and vendors for refresh, upgrade, migration, and other technical project initiatives. 9. Risk and Dependency Management • Track project risks, issues, dependencies, action items, and status updates to ensure milestones, operational commitments, and implementation readiness are met. 10. Cross-Functional Collaboration • Work with application, network, security, and vendor teams to resolve platform-related issues and maintain runbooks, SOPs, governance artefacts, and supporting documentation. Requirements Experience • At least 5 years of experience in infrastructure or platform operations. • Experience supporting production or mission-critical environments. • Strong technical understanding of infrastructure operations across virtualisation, operating systems, storage, backup, networking, and related platforms. • Experience working with vendor-supported operating models and managing external support teams. • Able to participate in technical troubleshooting, issue deep dives, and problem resolution for complex incidents. • Experience supporting technical governance, security governance, change review, or service request approval processes is preferred. • Experience supporting technical project delivery, including coordination, issue and risk tracking, dependency management, and stakeholder follow-up. • At least 2 years of experience in government or public sector settings. • Good to have data centre operations experience. • Strong communication and coordination skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Technical Requirements Infrastructure Platforms • Experience with infrastructure platforms such as VMware, Hyper-V, or Nutanix. • Experience with Red Hat Linux and/or Windows Server environments. • Familiarity with enterprise storage, backup, HA, and DR solutions. • Strong understanding of monitoring, observability, logging, and alerting practices. • Solid understanding of networking fundamentals such as TCP/IP, DNS, routing, firewalls, load balancing, and segmentation. • Familiarity with hybrid infrastructure environments, including AWS or Azure. Desired Technical Skills • Experience with automation tools such as Ansible, Puppet, Chef, or Terraform. • Familiarity with scripting languages such as Python, PowerShell, or Bash. • Familiarity with containerisation and orchestration platforms such as Docker or Kubernetes. • Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for automated provisioning and configuration. Qualifications • Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field. Desired Certifications • VMware Certified Professional (VCP). • Microsoft Certified: Windows Server. • Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE). • ITIL v4 Foundation. • AWS or Azure Associate-level (or equivalent) cloud certifications.