Principal Engineer - Software Engineering
Summary
A 12-month contract role placing a Kubernetes Principal Engineer/Platform Architect at BAE Systems Submarine Solutions in Frimley (hybrid, 2-3 days onsite). The focus is technical leadership: designing the target architecture, security, and governance for running CI workloads on on-prem Kubernetes, using Ansible, IaC, Linux, and CI/CD/DevSecOps toolchains.
Principal Engineer - Software Engineering (Kubernetes )
Client: BAE Systems (Submarine Solutions)
Location: Frimley, Surrey (hybrid 2 to 3 days onsite)
Contract: 12 months
Rate: £50 PAYE or £67.47 UMB
BAE Systems (Submarine Solutions) is looking for an experienced Kubernetes Principal Engineer / Platform Architect to shape the architecture and engineering standards for introducing containerised workloads into their Continuous Integration environment.
This is not a "run and operate a cluster" role. The focus is on technical leadership and platform design: defining the approach, standards and governance that will support secure, scalable adoption across teams.
What you'll be doing- Define end-to-end target architecture for CI workloads running on Kubernetes
- Design workload isolation, networking, artefact flow, autoscaling and resource management
- Build out a secure container supply chain approach (image build, scanning, promotion, registry design, environment separation)
- Set direction on policy enforcement and secrets management integration
- Establish an observability/operating model (logging, metrics, monitoring, alerting)
- Create a migration strategy (candidate workloads, phased plan, risks and rollback)
- Provide hands-on input into an on-prem Kubernetes environment to support experimentation, analysis and design decisions
- Mentor engineers and influence delivery across a complex engineering environment
- Strong experience designing Kubernetes platforms (not just administering)
- Hands-on background designing, building and maintaining on-prem Kubernetes clusters (ideally 5+ years)
- Experience integrating Kubernetes into CI/CD / DevSecOps toolchains
- Ansible and Infrastructure as Code experience
- Solid Linux and IP networking knowledge
- Understanding of container supply chain security
- Comfortable operating at engineering leadership / architecture level
Skills:
* Ability to operate at engineering leadership / architecture level
* Strong experience designing Kubernetes platforms, not just operating them
* Proven experience integrating Kubernetes with CI/CD systems
* Experience with multi-team platform design and governance
Desirable:
* Experience with GitOps (e.g., ArgoCD, Flux)
* Experience with cloud-native build tooling (e.g., BuildKit, Kaniko)
* Familiarity with enterprise-scale engineering environments
Qualifications:
* (Ideally 5+ years experience)
* STEM, CEng, Chartered IT Professional (CITP) ect