Principal AWS Cloud Engineer

Package: £76,500 - £100,000 (salary dependent on experience) + Benefits

Security Clearance: Due to the nature of the projects involved, applicants must be eligible to obtain Security Check (SC) Clearance as a minimum.

37-hour working week. Hybrid working with an average of 3 days per week onsite.

The Role

Our client is a leading UK technology and engineering organisation operating at the forefront of defence, security, digital transformation and advanced research. As a Principal AWS Cloud Engineer, you will define and drive cloud strategy, architect resilient and secure AWS-based solutions, and provide technical direction across multiple engineering teams.

Acting as the highest level of technical escalation, you will play a pivotal role in shaping engineering best practices, mentoring engineers at all levels, and ensuring the successful delivery of enterprise-scale cloud solutions. This is a hands-on leadership role requiring deep AWS expertise and a passion for driving technical excellence.

Key Responsibilities

Architect complex, multi-region, highly available AWS environments aligned to long-term business objectives and product roadmaps. Write, test, and maintain complex, production-grade IaC using Terraform. You will be directly responsible for managing and scaling the AWS Control Tower and landing zone architectures Actively contribute to codebase. Develop backend services, automation scripts, and custom tooling using modern programming languages. Evaluate emerging AWS services and third-party technologies by prototyping them to enhance capability, efficiency and time-to-market. Guide technical decision-making across engineering teams and ensure successful integration between infrastructure and software development. Design, write AND deploy enterprise-grade CI/CD pipelines and internal developer platforms that enable our teams to ship securely and autonomously. Drive AWS cost optimisation initiatives and improve performance across distributed systems, microservices, databases and network infrastructure. Act as a trusted advisor to engineering leadership and contribute to cloud strategy, governance and architectural standards. Mentor senior, mid-level and junior engineers, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and operational excellence.

Essential Experience:

Extensive experience designing, implementing and operating AWS cloud infrastructure. Expert-level knowledge of AWS services, including networking technologies such as Transit Gateway and Direct Connect, compute, storage, security and governance. Strong expertise in Infrastructure as Code and configuration management. Software engineering background with advanced knowledge of Python, Go, Java or Node.js. Demonstrable experience leading large-scale technical initiatives and influencing engineering strategy across multiple teams. Proven track record designing, deploying and supporting large-scale distributed systems and microservices architectures. Strong stakeholder management and the ability to drive technical consensus across complex organisations.

Essential Qualifications:

AWS Associate Certification minimum (Professional level certifications highly desirable)

Interested? Apply today via the link provided