
Optimal IT Recruitment Ltd
Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineer
Job Description
Salary: £100,000 - 100,000 per year
Requirements:- We require strong experience with Kubernetes and containerisation, including Docker and orchestration at scale.
- We require hands-on production infrastructure experience.
- We require experience with Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform, Ansible, or similar.
- We require proficiency in Python, Go, Java, or a comparable backend language.
- We require experience designing and delivering CI/CD pipelines.
- We require comfort operating in a fast-paced, high-autonomy environment.
- We require a proven track record of building and deploying production systems, not just maintaining them.
- We require the ability to own reliability, monitoring, and operations end to end.
- We require willingness to participate in an on-call rotation.
- We require eligibility to hold active UK SC clearance, or to obtain it through a British passport, ILR, or Settled Status.
- We require the ability to work UK hours and be hybrid in London.
- We build, operate, and maintain high-performance, scalable, and reliable production infrastructure.
- We own reliability end to end, including monitoring, alerting, config management, and upgrades.
- We deploy new products and run migrations across production environments.
- We lead automation efforts to reduce manual toil and improve resilience.
- We debug, harden, and optimise services with a focus on long-term reliability.
- We participate in an on-call rotation for production support.
- We partner with delivery and product teams on sensible, scalable systems design.
- Ansible
- Backend
- CI/CD
- Docker
- Support
- Java
- Kubernetes
- Python
- Security
- Terraform
- AI
- Cloud
- DevOps
- LLM
More:
We are a publicly listed technology company building mission-critical software for some of the most important institutions in the world. This is a forward-deployed infrastructure role where we operate at startup speed inside a high-security, high-impact environment, owning reliability, deployments, and automation for systems where uptime genuinely matters. The role is hands-on and focused on production infrastructure, system reliability, and scaling operations, working closely with product and delivery teams in a high-ownership setting with minimal bureaucracy. We offer a salary of £90,000 to £105,000 plus RSUs, a hybrid working model with 1 to 2 days per week in our London office for secure work and on-call, relocation support for candidates outside London, and an on-call rotation of roughly every 5 to 6 weeks.
last updated 30 week of 2026
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About Optimal IT Recruitment Ltd

Optimal IT Recruitment Ltd
London
IT
Skills & Technologies
Inferred from job description
Salary Insight
£100,000
This role
£60,000
UK median
This salary is 67% above the UK median for Software Engineers (£60,000/yr).
Based on 2024–2025 UK technology sector benchmarks