Senior Platform Engineer

PhysicsX is a deep-tech company of scientists and engineers, developing machine learning applications to massively accelerate physics simulations and enable a new frontier of optimisation opportunities in design, engineering, and systems control.

We help our customers fundamentally improve their concepts and designs, transform their engineering processes and drive operational product performance. We do this in some of the most advanced and important industries of our time – including Renewables & Sustainability, Space, Aerospace, Medical Devices, Additive Manufacturing and Energy. Our work creates positive impact for society, be it by improving the design of artificial hearts, reducing CO2 emissions from aircraft and road vehicles, or increasing the performance of wind turbines. 

The Role

We’re looking for enthusiastic and passionate Senior Platform Engineers to join our Cloud Engineering team at PhysicsX. The Cloud Engineering team is fundamental to, and underpins, how our software is deployed for use both internally and by customers. We collaborate across the organization to support our product teams as they build our enterprise software-as-a-service platform, our delivery teams tackling complex engineering challenges with our customers, and our research teams working on cutting-edge AI research and technology. The Cloud Engineering team is critical in enabling all of our teams to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the world of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

As a Platform Engineer, you will be paramount to the development and implementation of our internal developer platform, significantly enhancing the experience of our software engineers at scale. This role presents an exciting opportunity to shape the future of our cloud estate and self-service internal developer platform in a dynamic environment where innovation and impact are prioritized.

Our Cloud Engineering team is diverse in skillset, working collaboratively on infrastructure and corresponding tools that constitute our internal developer platform offering. Recent projects have included supporting our public release of Ai.rplane; optimizing cloud-based GPU workloads for model training, and re-architecting our cloud estate to modernise, standardise, and reduce cost. You can find out more about PhysicsX and our work from our AWS re:Invent 2024 talks, including how we’re using high-performance computing to drive innovation, or how large geometry models are transforming advanced engineering.

If this sounds exciting to you, we would love to talk — even if you don’t tick all of the boxes.

What you will do

• Manage day-to-day operations of our cloud infrastructure, primarily on AWS, with increasing work across Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and other cloud providers
• Design, implement, and manage scalable Kubernetes architectures with a strong focus on multi-tenancy, ensuring efficiency and security across our cloud infrastructure and internal developer platform
• Collaborate across teams to understand their needs and facilitate the deployment and end-to-end management of applications across Kubernetes clusters
• Utilise tools such as Helm, Terraform, and GitHub Actions to automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and continuous deployment processes
• Enhance our internal developer platform, working closely with software engineers to identify pain points and deliver outcomes to improve their workflows
• Architect and continually enhance our cloud infrastructure, implementing best practices to streamline and simplify operations

What the ideal candidate looks like

• Prior experience as a Platform Engineer, DevOps Engineer, or in a similar role with a focus on internal developer platforms or infrastructure-as-as-service
• Strong proficiency in Kubernetes, including multi-tenancy architectures, security by design, and experience deploying and managing Kubernetes clusters in production environments
• Strong collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across diverse teams
• Experience in building and troubleshooting large-scale distributed systems and infrastructure on cloud service providers
• Experience using tools like Helm, Terraform, Crossplane, etc.
• Experience in cloud networking fundamentals
• Familiarity with the Kubernetes operator pattern and its advantages and disadvantages
• Familiarity with cloud service providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.) and their respective services, understanding the balance between Kubernetes-native services and cloud-based services
• Familiarity with one or more programming languages, such as Python or Go
• Familiarity with observability tools such as OpenTelemetry, Grafana, and Prometheus
• Familiarity with using and provisioning GPUs in a cloud environment
• Enthusiasm in using modern, cloud-native technologies, such as the CNCF landscape projects and products

What we offer

• Be part of something larger: Make an impact and meaningfully shape an early-stage company. Work on some of the most exciting and important topics there are. Do something you can be proud of
• Work with a fun group of colleagues that support you, challenge you and help you grow. We come from many different backgrounds, but what we have in common is the desire to operate at the very top of our fields and solve truly challenging problems in science and engineering. If you are similarly capable, caring and driven, you'll find yourself at home here
• Experience a truly flat hierarchy. Voicing your ideas is not only welcome but encouraged, especially when they challenge the status quo
• Work sustainably, striking the right balance between work and personal life.
• Receive a competitive compensation and equity package, in addition to plenty of perks such as generous vacation and parental leave, complimentary office food, as well as fun outings and events
• Work in a flexible setting, with the opportunity to collaborate in our lovely Shoreditch office and enjoy a good proportion of time working from home, if desired. Get the opportunity to occasionally visit our customers' engineering sites and experience first-hand how our work is transforming their ways of working
• Use first-class equipment for working in-office or remotely, including in-house HPC and GPU stack

We value diversity and are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of sex, race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, disability, age, sexual orientation or gender identity. We strongly encourage individuals from groups traditionally underrepresented in tech to apply. To help make a change, we sponsor bright women from disadvantaged backgrounds through their university degrees in science and mathematics.