Junior Platform Engineer

Role overview:

Junior Platform Engineer
Waterloo - Hybrid Working
Full Time
Permanent
Grade 3

As a Junior Platform Engineer you will help build and run the cloud platform that our engineering teams deploy to every day. You will join our Platform Engineering function, working alongside Site Reliability and Cloud Engineering colleagues across Azure, infrastructure as code and CI/CD, to make it faster, safer and cheaper for teams to get software into production.

A core focus of this role is our golden path: a standard, self service route to production that lets delivery teams start from an approved template, push their code to GitLab and have it built, tested, scanned and deployed automatically. The golden path runs in a new Azure landing zone built on simple, Azure native services such as Azure Container Apps, Azure SQL and Cosmos DB, and it will host smaller AI assisted applications alongside the simple applications we are bringing in house rather than paying third parties to run. Security and code quality standards agreed with InfoSec are baked into the pipeline using tooling we already own, such as GitLab, so teams know exactly what is required to go live.

This is a hands on engineering role with a clear development path. You will work closely with senior engineers, take ownership of well defined pieces of work and contribute production quality code and configuration from your first weeks. In doing so you will support the two objectives of Platform Engineering: enabling development teams in the near term and reducing the long term cost of running our platform.

Role overview:

• Azure platform: Help build, configure and operate our Azure landing zones and shared platform services, using Azure native services such as Container Apps, App Service, Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Key Vault and Entra ID, with guidance from senior engineers.
• Infrastructure as code: Write, test and maintain Terraform modules and environment configuration so that every environment is version controlled, built the same way every time and can be rebuilt on demand.
• Golden path and CI/CD: Build and maintain GitLab CI/CD pipeline templates that embed automated testing, code quality gates, security scanning and artifact management using SonarQube, JFrog, BrowserStack and approved open source tools, giving teams fast feedback and a repeatable route to production.
• Security and governance: Implement the guardrails agreed with InfoSec, including role based access control, managed identities, secrets management, Azure Policy and tagging standards, and help keep the environment isolated with a small blast radius.
• Developer enablement: Help onboard delivery teams onto the golden path, maintain application templates, coding standards files and documentation, answer developer questions and feed what you learn back into improving the platform.
• Observability and cost: Ensure every application deployed through the platform ships with New Relic monitoring, logging, health checks and alerting from day one, and support FinOps practices such as budgets, right sizing and automatic clean up of unused resources so that spend tracks real usage.
• Platform support: Triage and resolve platform issues, contribute to runbooks and blameless post incident reviews, automate repetitive manual tasks, and join the support rota once trained.
• Learning and engineering culture: Actively develop your Azure, Terraform and CI/CD skills through pairing, certification and practice, and share what you learn with the wider team to raise engineering standards.

Required Skills & Experience:

Essential:

• Hands on experience with Microsoft Azure, gained through work, study or personal projects, covering core services such as compute, storage, networking and identity (Entra ID), and at least one platform service such as Azure Container Apps, App Service, Azure SQL or Cosmos DB.
• Experience building or maintaining CI/CD pipelines, ideally in GitLab, with an understanding of how automated build, test, scan and deploy stages fit together into a golden path.
• Working knowledge of infrastructure as code, ideally Terraform, including how modules, state and environments are structured.
• Scripting and automation skills in at least one language such as Python, Bash or PowerShell, with the discipline to use Git, write readable code and work through merge requests and code review.
• Comfort working with Linux and containers (Docker), and an understanding of cloud security basics: least privilege access, role based access control, managed identities and secrets management.

Desirable:

• Exposure to platform engineering or developer experience concepts such as golden paths, internal developer platforms, application templates and self service tooling.
• Experience with quality and security tooling such as SonarQube, JFrog Artifactory, BrowserStack, Trivy, Gitleaks or Checkov.
• Experience with monitoring tools such as New Relic or Azure Monitor.
• Experience using AI coding assistants such as Claude Code.

Why join us:

Join our team and we'll be with you every step of the way, helping you develop the career you want with new opportunities, on-going training and skills for life.

Not only can you shape your own future, but you can help take charge of ours too. As the biggest recycler and repairer of tech in the UK, we’re in a position to make a real impact on people and the planet.

Every voice has a space at our table and we're committed to making inclusion and diversity part of everything we do, including how we strengthen our workforce. We want to make sure you have a fair opportunity to show us your talents during our application process, so if you need any additional assistance with your application please email careers@currys.co.uk and we'll do our best to help.