Cloud Platform Engineer - Google Cloud (GCP)

Salary: £60,000 - £72,000 per annum

Employment type: Permanent

Hours per week: 37

Reporting into: Lead Platform Engineer

Department: IT

Click here to read the full job description and view our excellent benefits here

This role operates primarily on a remote working arrangement that will require little to no travel into our Coventry head office or various campuses. Our working model arrangements are a non-contractual benefit so please note that an Arden work location is added to our employment contracts.

Sorry we cannot sponsor skilled worker visas for this role.

About Arden University:

We are an aspirational and multi-award-winning university, delivering rapid growth with ambitious plans to disrupt the HE sector through our passion for innovation and digital education. Our vision is to become the first-choice university for career-focused lifelong learners worldwide, ensuring that everyone, everywhere can access higher education, by leading the thoughtful integration of AI into teaching and learning and equipping our students to thrive in an AI-enabled world.

There has never been a more exciting time to join Arden University, as we expand into new disciplines, forge worldwide partnerships, and expand our locations..

About our Department:

The Cloud Platform Engineer - Google Cloud (GCP) sits within our Technology Department that is crucial to making sure our employees and students can work effectively, deliver projects, find the right solutions and ensure we develop the technology that will make the biggest difference.

Our IT team is made up of around 100 employees with a vast range of skills from Software Development to IT Operations and Security.

Our IT Department values employee development and we have lots of great examples of employee progression and promotions within the team.

About the Opportunity:

As a Cloud Platform Engineer - Google Cloud (GCP), you will play a key role in designing, building and operating Arden University’s Google Cloud platform, including the cloud infrastructure and services that underpin our production Agentic AI capabilities. You will establish secure, resilient and scalable cloud foundations, develop reusable platform capabilities and strengthen DevOps practices, enabling our product, integration, data and AI teams to deliver services safely and efficiently.

Combining hands-on cloud engineering with automation, infrastructure as code and platform operations, you will ensure our environments are consistent, well-governed, observable and cost-effective. Working closely with teams across Platform, Infrastructure, Cyber Security, Development, Integration, Data and AI, you will embed security, reliability and operational best practice throughout the cloud lifecycle. You will also help enable our evolving Agentic AI capabilities through secure access to models and tools, managed identities, retrieval services, runtime controls and monitoring, supporting Arden’s wider digital transformation and multi-cloud strategy.

About You:

Essential Skills Experience:

• Substantial hands-on experience engineering and operating production workloads on Google Cloud, including building and maintaining landing zones and cloud foundations.

• Strong knowledge of Google Cloud resource hierarchy, organisation policies, IAM, service accounts, Workload Identity, networking and secure project configuration.

• Practical experience with core Google Cloud services, including GKE, Cloud Run, Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, Pub/Sub, Cloud DNS, load balancing, Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring.

• Experience deploying and scaling Kubernetes and containerised services across public or private cloud environments, including GKE, EKS or AKS, alongside serverless workloads.

• Proficiency in Terraform, reusable modules and Infrastructure as Code, with experience implementing CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Cloud Build, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or Azure DevOps.

• Strong scripting and automation skills using Bash, Python, the Google Cloud CLI and Git, with practical knowledge of Linux, networking, APIs and SQL.

• Experience implementing cloud security controls, including encryption, secrets management, network security, vulnerability remediation, data protection and auditable guardrails.

• Experience supporting production generative AI and Agentic AI services on Google Cloud, including model and agent runtimes, RAG and data grounding, tool integration, agent identities, secure access, observability and evaluation.

• Strong understanding of cloud monitoring and operational reliability

• Experience managing cloud consumption, budgets, forecasts, capacity and cost optimisation, including showback and chargeback practices.

• Understanding of cloud reliability, performance, scalability and capacity planning, balancing cost efficiency with operational resilience.

Desirable Skills / Experience:

• Certifications in AWS / Microsoft Azure / Kubernetes

• Experience with AWS and/or Microsoft Azure in hybrid or multi-cloud environments.

• Familiarity with additional Google Cloud services, such as Apigee, Eventarc, BigQuery, Cloud SQL, Spanner, Secret Manager, Cloud KMS, Security Command Center and Vertex AI.

• Experience supporting data, integration, machine learning, generative AI or Agentic AI workloads, including managed agent runtimes, RAG, vector search and AI security controls.

• Experience with cloud migration, platform engineering, developer self-service, policy-as-code or configuration compliance.

• Understanding of software architecture, API and event-driven integration, and site reliability engineering practices.

• Experience working within security and risk-management frameworks, such as ISO 27001 or Cyber Essentials.

• Experience working in Agile or Kanban teams and following formal incident, problem, change and release-management processes.

Why Arden:

At Arden, you will become a part of a passionate and dedicated team who are committed to removing unnecessary barriers to learning and making education more accessible. Our people work hard to ensure our students journeys are the best they can possibly be, as such we want to reward our people with fantastic benefits. Employees benefit from:

• 30 days holiday + bank holidays on-top, and even a Christmas closure!

• A generous Aviva pension plan, company contributions starting from 7%

• BUPA Cash Plan

• Private Medical Insurance coverage (applies to certain job roles)

• Access to Perkbox benefits

• Study any Arden course for free, with a discount for all family and friends

• Plus, other excellent benefits

• Our ‘Golden Ticket’ which allows you to gift anyone in your life a free Arden education

Our Values:

Stand out, Progressive, Accessible, Resourceful, Kindness, reflect who we are as an institution, a team and as individuals. If they also reflect you and you are excited by the chance to be the driving, creative force within a growing business, we want to hear from you.

There has never been a more exciting time to join Arden University, as we expand into new disciplines and locations.

Closing Date: 5th November

We reserve the right to close this vacancy before the specified closing date should we receive sufficient applications or in order to respond to business needs. In order to avoid missing an opportunity to apply please submit your application as early as possible.

If you are a current Arden student or have an upcoming course with us, you are not eligible to apply for Student Experience roles due to a conflict of interest related to system access.

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion:

Arden University is proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. This means that if you have a disability, as defined by the Disability Equality Act 2010, you may be guaranteed an interview if you meet the essential criteria for the role.

If you wish to be considered under this scheme, you can indicate via the application form below. By doing so, you are also consenting for this information to be shared with the hiring team. For more details on what qualifies as a disability under the Disability Equality Act 2010, please refer to the guidance here.

As an Equal Opportunity Employer we celebrate diversity and are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. Therefore, we make sure that our recruitment and selection processes never discriminate based upon people's age, disability, gender, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or other personal circumstances, and actively welcome applications from all groups.

Sponsorship statement:

Please be aware that some roles may not meet the points requirement for a sponsored Skilled Worker visa, or fulfil the criteria we have for providing sponsorship.  However we welcome applications from candidates who do not currently have the right to work in the UK but may be eligible for a visa through an alternative route.

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