Principal Engineer (Cloud) - AWS

Location: Amesbury, England, United Kingdom

Role Type: Permanent – Full Time

Package: Competitive Salary + Benefits

We are not just imagining tomorrow, we are creating it. From cutting‑edge defence technology to ground‑breaking innovations, our mission is to empower and protect lives. Join us as a Principal AWS Cloud Engineer at any of our main UK sites, where you will have the opportunity to work with cutting‑edge technology in partnership with some of the most brilliant minds.

Role Overview

As a Principal AWS Cloud Engineer you will lead the technical direction of our cloud infrastructure and platform engineering initiatives, defining the overarching cloud strategy and architecting highly resilient, scalable, and secure distributed systems on AWS.

Day‑to‑day you’ll serve as the highest level of technical escalation and be a trusted advisor to engineering leadership, providing technical leadership and mentorship to senior, mid‑level and junior engineers and fostering a culture of continuous learning, rigorous peer review, and operational excellence.

Responsibilities

• Architect complex, multi‑region, highly available AWS cloud environments that align with long‑term business goals and product roadmaps.
• Continuously evaluate emerging AWS services and third‑party tools to determine their viability for improving our technology stack and reducing time‑to‑market.
• Guide technical decision‑making across multiple engineering squads and cross‑functional collaboration to ensure seamless integration of cloud infrastructure with product development.
• Architect internal developer platforms and enterprise‑grade CI/CD frameworks that enable development teams to operate autonomously and securely.
• Implement AWS cost optimisation strategies and drive optimisations to resolve systemic performance bottlenecks across microservices, databases, and network layers.

Essential Experience

• Extensive experience in cloud infrastructure dedicated specifically to AWS.
• Expert knowledge of the entire AWS ecosystem, particularly complex networking (Transit Gateway, Direct Connect), compute, data storage, and enterprise security configurations.
• Exceptional proficiency in Infrastructure as Code and configuration management.
• Strong software background with deep expertise in at least one modern programming language (Python, Go, Java, or Node.JS).
• Demonstrated experience leading large technical projects, influencing organisational engineering culture and driving cross‑team consensus.
• Proven track record of designing, deploying, and maintaining large‑scale, distributed software systems and microservices architectures.

Essential Qualifications

• Minimum of AWS Associate certification or higher.

All applicants for this role must be eligible for SC clearance, as a minimum.

This role is 37 hours per week based at any of our main UK sites with a minimum average site attendance of three days per week. Shift patterns are between 07:30‑18:30 GMT and you may be asked to work at specific times. As part of our commitment to maintaining high service availability and rapid incident response, this role requires participation in an on‑call rota.

At QinetiQ we are committed to building an inclusive, accessible, and welcoming workplace where everyone feels valued and supported. We believe that a diverse mix of backgrounds, perspectives and experiences drives innovation and leads to better outcomes for our people, customers and communities. We encourage applications from all candidates and are a disability confident committed employer. If you have a disability or need any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.

Benefits

• Matched contribution pension scheme, with life assurance.
• Generous holiday allowance, with the option to purchase additional days.
• Options to join Health Cash Plan, Private Medical Insurance and Dental Insurance.
• Employee discount portal: Personal Accident Insurance, Travel Insurance, Restaurants, Cinema Tickets and more.
• We are proud to support the Armed Forces community by honoring the Armed Forces Covenant and maintaining our Gold Award standard in the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme.
• Volunteering opportunities – helping charities and local community.

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