Expert technical leadership. Modern Tech-Stack. Being Agile. 

Senior Platform Engineering Manager

£77,000 - £82,000 (+ Benefits)

Reports to: Head of Engineering

Department: Chief Operating Office

Contract: Permanent

Hours: Full time 35 hours per week

Location: Stratford, London. Office-based with high flexibility (1-2 days per week in the office)

Visa sponsorship: Cancer Research UK can consider visa sponsorship for this vacancy. If this applies to you, please ensure that this is clearly marked on your application. 

Closing date: 28 November 2024 23:55

This vacancy may close earlier if a high volume of applications is received or once a suitable candidate is found, therefore we strongly recommend that you apply early to avoid disappointment. If you require more time to apply as part of a reasonable adjustment, please contact [email protected] as soon as possible.

Recruitment process: Two competency-based interviews

Interview date: From the week commencing 02 and 09 December 2024

How do I apply? We operate an anonymised shortlisting process in our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion. CVs are required for all applications; but we won’t be able to view them until we invite you for an interview. Instead, we ask you to fully complete the work history section of the online application form for us to be able to assess you quickly, fairly, and objectively.

At Cancer Research UK, we exist to beat cancer.

We are professionals with purpose, beating cancer every day. But we need to go much further and much faster. That’s why we’re looking for someone talented, someone who wants to develop their skills, someone like you.

Cancer Research UK has an ambitious Engineering Strategy and modern Tech Stack with a complex hybrid (on-premise & multi-cloud) infrastructure underpinning an extensive technical estate. As part of our Sustain strategy, the charity is delivering a range of ambitious, modern change initiatives and programmes across the organisation to ensure we maximise the value of all our resources while delivering operational transformation & management and an employee experience that enables us to be an inclusive, well-governed, agile, and sustainable organisation. Therefore, our infrastructure, cloud, AWS, Azure, Data Centre, Network, Power Platform, and Microsoft 365 technologies must operate securely and scale to meet the organisation’s needs if we are to deliver our strategy of beating cancer.

Our in-house software solutions include a Content Management platform supporting multiple websites, Event and Activity Management web applications, Online Fundraising platform, Payments platform, Ecommerce and mobile apps.  These are business critical systems under continual agile development, operating at scale for millions of users such as: cancer patients looking for information, supporters and volunteers helping with fundraising, c.600+ stores, c.4,000+ office staff, and researchers working towards curing cancer. 

We are searching for a Senior Platform Engineering Manager to lead our highly skilled, cross-disciplined, and diverse Platform Engineering capability (c.25-30 staff) which supports the charity’s product development whilst establishing an agile, secure, and smooth-running digital workplace. The purpose of your role will be to deliver our platform engineering strategy while providing technical leadership that develops the teams’ skills and careers and encourages innovation by setting up small multi-skilled product teams empowered to make decisions and prioritise their work.

If you are an Engineering leader who has motivated and developed Infrastructure/ Platform engineering teams in large organisations with expertise in cloud engineering, we would love for you to join our mission.

What will I be doing?

• Leading Cancer Research UK’s Platform Engineering capability (c. 25 to 30 staff) by:

  • Recruiting and supporting infrastructure engineers’ career development.

  • Providing expert technical guidance and motivational leadership that drives for impact and embraces our mission as a collective effort.

• Collaborating with peers to evolve and deliver the platform engineering strategy while developing platforms and products that are reliable, secure, performant, and flexible.

• Collaborating with Product Portfolios and Product Managers to deliver their priorities.

• Developing the Platform Engineering capability model while collaborating with Lead Engineers to develop standards and reusable assets and encourage knowledge sharing (the current capabilities include AWS, Azure, Data Centre, Networks, M365, and Power Platform).

• Partnering with internal and external stakeholders ensuring a mature approach to architecting new solutions, giving estimates and commitments; and delivering on agreed commitments while optimising the efficiency of the team.  

• Prioritising and leading on skills and career development within the Platform team by:

  • Paying in-depth attention to developing strengths across multiple technologies that have been carefully selected to deliver Cancer Research UK’s mission.

  • Reducing reliance on contract resources.

  • Creating an environment where our platform team can do impactful work that is an exciting, motivating and fulfilling place to work.

  • Fostering conditions where ideas and fresh approaches thrive by being curious and valuing challenges and ideas.

• Fostering collaborative relationships with the others in the Engineering first-line team and across the Technology directorate to ensure appropriate levels of governance, platform reliability, efficiency and quality of delivery.

• Ensuring equality and diversity are celebrated and considered as part of all decisions taken. 

• Taking accountability for line managing, leading, and developing an inclusive and high-functioning team by creating a positive culture that recognises success, develops and drives high performance, and rewards results to retain talent within the team and wider function. 

• Setting objectives and KPIs (key performance indicators) for the team, monitoring and tracking over-performance with recognition, and supporting underperformance through a performance management process. 

What skills will I need?

• Experienced engineering leader who has recruited, developed, and engaged infrastructure engineering teams in large, complex organisations. 

• Excellent knowledge of the fast-moving technology landscape with a particular focus on cloud engineering and knowledge of:

  • Current best practices (e.g. BDD, CI/CD).

  • Architectural approaches and their future direction (e.g. serverless services, infrastructure-as-code, containerisation, and modern networking approaches).  

  • AWS serverless services (e.g. Amplify, Lambda, Aurora) with CDK (Typescript and Python).

  • Azure and private cloud hosted on VMware and Cisco compute and networking solutions.

• A technical expert and a motivational leader with mature stakeholder management skills.

• A comprehensive understanding of the software delivery lifecycle, infrastructure lifecycle management, and different delivery approaches (including DevOps and Agile).

• Has matured platform engineering practices by retaining ambition and agility while establishing robust approaches fit for business-critical applications.

• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate highly technical subjects for non-technical audiences.

Our organisation values are designed to guide all that we do.

Bold: Act with ambition, courage and determination  

Credible: Act with rigour and professionalism   

Human: Act to have a positive impact on people  

Together: Act inclusively and collaboratively

We’re looking for people who can believe in and embody these organisation values and can use them to drive forward progress against our mission to beat cancer.

If you’re interested in applying and excited about working with us but are unsure if you have the right skills and experience we’d still love to hear from you.

What will I gain?

We create a working environment that supports your wellbeing and provide a generous benefits package, a wide range of career and personal development opportunities and high-quality tools. Our policies and processes enable you to improve your work-life balance, take positive steps in your career and achieve your personal wellbeing goals.

You can explore our benefits by visiting our careers web page.

Additional Information

For more information about working with us please visit our website or contact us at [email protected].  

For more updates on our work and careers, follow us on: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube.

Our vision is to create a charity where everyone feels like they belong, benefits from and participates in, the work we do. We actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and cultures, in particular those from ethnic minority backgrounds who are currently under-represented.

We want to see every candidate performing at their best throughout the job application process, interview process and whilst at work. We therefore ask you to inform us of any concerns you have or any adjustments you might need to enable this to happen. Please contact [email protected] or 020 3469 8400 as soon as possible. 

Unfortunately, we are unable to recruit anyone below the age of 18, so that we can protect young people from health & safety and safeguarding risks.