Principal Engineer (Cloud) - AWS

About the Role

Are you ready to be part of the future? At QinetiQ, we’re not just imagining tomorrow, we are creating it. From cutting-edge defence technology to ground-breaking innovations, our mission is to empower and protect lives. Join us as a Principal AWS Cloud Engineer at any of our main UK sites, where you will have the opportunity to work with cutting-edge technology in partnership with some of the most brilliant minds.

As a Principal AWS Cloud Engineer, you will lead the technical direction of our cloud infrastructure and platform engineering initiatives, defining the overarching cloud strategy and architecting highly resilient, scalable, and secure distributed systems on AWS. Day-to-day, you’ll serve as the highest level of technical escalation and be a trusted advisor to engineering leadership, providing Technical Leadership & Mentorship to Senior, Mid-Level and Junior Engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning, rigorous peer review, and operational excellence.

Responsibilities

• Architect complex, multi-region, and highly available AWS cloud environments that align with long-term business goals and product roadmaps.
• Continuously evaluate emerging AWS services and third-party tools to determine their viability for improving our technology stack and reducing time-to-market.
• Guide technical decision-making across multiple engineering squads and foster cross-functional collaboration to ensure seamless integration of cloud infrastructure with product development.
• Maintain complex, modular codebases using Terraform/AWS CDK/Pulumi.
• Architect internal developer platforms and enterprise-grade CI/CD frameworks that enable development teams to operate autonomously and securely.
• Implement AWS cost optimisation strategies and drive optimisations to resolve systemic performance bottlenecks across microservices, databases, and network layers.

Essential Experience

• Extensive experience in cloud infrastructure dedicated specifically to AWS.
• Expert knowledge of the entire AWS ecosystem, particularly complex networking (Transit Gateway, Direct Connect), compute, data storage, and enterprise security configurations.
• Exceptional proficiency in Infrastructure as Code and configuration management.
• Strong software background with deep expertise in at least one modern programming language (Python, Go, Java, or Node.JS).
• Demonstrated experience leading large technical projects, influencing organisational engineering culture, and driving cross-team consensus.
• Proven track record of designing, deploying, and maintaining large-scale, distributed software systems and microservices architectures.

Essential Qualifications

• Minimum of AWS Associate certification or higher.

Work Environment & Benefits

This role is 37 hours per week, based at any of our main UK sites with a minimum average site attendance of three days per week. To cover shift patterns between 0730-1830 GMT, you may be asked to work at specific times. As part of a commitment to maintaining high service availability and rapid incident response, this role will be required to participate in an on-call rota.

QinetiQ operates state-of-the-art facilities across the UK that focus on defence, security, and technology innovation. We offer a matched contribution pension scheme with life assurance, a generous holiday allowance with the option to purchase additional days, and options to join a Health Cash Plan, Private Medical Insurance, and Dental Insurance. An employee discount portal provides access to Personal Accident Insurance, Travel Insurance, Restaurants, Cinema Tickets, and much more. We are proud to support the Armed Forces community.