[Hiring] SRE Platform Engineer @Buxton

Role Description

We’re looking for an SRE Platform Engineer to join our team, who will help build internal product and platform capabilities to unify Audiense’s overall experience. The team works with a strong product mindset, Extreme Programming practices (pairing, TDD), and a focus on long-term, systemic impact, even when results are not immediate.

If you enjoy working collaboratively, and are open to learning, and bringing your own perspective and experience to the team, then maybe this post is for you! You should also feel comfortable operating a dual space that:

• Builds platforms and infrastructures with clear ownership and intent
• Designs solutions that other teams can realistically adopt
• Makes technical decisions with systemic impact

This is not a pure execution role, and not a detached infrastructure role either. It’s a role for someone who enjoys thinking about why something should exist as much as how to build it.

The Team

You'd be joining a well-established team, with around 10 years of active collaboration across product and engineering. The SRE Platform team exists to reduce the cognitive load of other engineering teams, so they can produce more value without needing deep knowledge of our cloud infrastructure, SOC2 inventory requirements, and base security. They do this by unifying the Audiense engineering experience through simplicity, consistency, and intelligent guidance.

• The SRE Team builds their own roadmap, while carrying cross-team responsibility.
• They treat what is built as internal product, designed for reuse.
• Most tools serve the team, but others that matter most are used by other engineering teams — real products, with real users.
• Their impact is not always immediately visible to end users, but when it works well, the entire platform moves faster, safer, and more coherently.
• They continue to evolve the platform for security, reliability, and cost-efficiency, balanced with close collaboration.
• The relationship with other teams is genuinely fluid and healthy.

How they work

• The team works with a strong product mindset, even when building internal platforms.
• Day-to-day work is grounded in real agile practices, not just ceremonies:
• Extreme Programming as a reference framework
• Pair programming as a regular practice
• Test-Driven Development
• Incremental delivery and early feedback
• A constant focus on understanding why we build something, not just what
• These practices are not optional add-ons; they are a fundamental part of how they work.
• The team aims for an environment where it is safe to ask questions, to say “I don’t know yet”, and to learn in the open.
• They care more about how they work together and how they learn than about heroic individual performances.

The Challenge

Over the next phase, the team is focused on several strategic initiatives:

• Democratise deep cost analysis for other engineering teams — beyond AWS Cost Explorer.
• Embrace Kubernetes: level up the team on standards and migrate suitable ECS workloads.
• Improve KTLO management by automating the mechanical work, leaving only decisions and prioritisation to humans.

This role lives in a constant, and healthy, tension between advancing the team’s own roadmap and ensuring that what we build truly enables the rest of the organisation.

What you’ll do

• Design, build, and evolve the platform and infrastructure, helping shape the SRE Platform roadmap as it takes form.
• Build internal tools and automation, often with AI (Claude Code), to improve the developer experience across teams.
• Reduce the cognitive load of KTLO by automating manual, human-run steps so maintenance takes less and less of the team's time.
• Provide infrastructure support to developer teams, helping to ship faster, more safely, and more autonomously.
• Operate and improve containerised workloads on AWS ECS and Kubernetes (AWS EKS) in production.
• Manage and evolve cloud infrastructure as code (Terraform).
• Improve reliability, observability, performance, and cost-efficiency across the platform.
• Make technical decisions that balance local and global impact.
• Participate actively in architecture, design, and prioritisation discussions.
• Work closely with product, design, and engineering teams, delivering incrementally and learning continuously.
• Raise the bar through mentoring, feedback, and example.
• Help keep us SOC2-compliant: join the recurring ceremonies, keep monitoring on green, and ensure new platforms comply from day one.
• Are interested in joining our paid on-call rotation once you’ve built up enough experience with the platform.

What you bring

• Have worked in product-minded platform or infrastructure teams, not just ticket-driven operations.
• Have experience running and supporting production infrastructure and internal platforms used by other teams.
• Care about reliability, security, observability, and cost-efficiency as first-class concerns.
• Are comfortable with ambiguity and real-world trade-offs.
• Understand that meaningful impact is often indirect and takes time.
• Enjoy collaboration and understanding other teams’ constraints.
• Care deeply about software quality and the value it creates.
• Some experience as an SRE, platform, or infrastructure engineer — you’ve contributed to running and supporting production systems.
• Working knowledge of cloud (AWS) and containers, enough to be productive and adapt quickly.
• A genuine interest in Kubernetes and some hands-on exposure to it.
• Comfort with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform is a plus).
• Strong communication, collaboration, and an end-to-end ownership mindset.

Experience

We’re not looking for someone fresh out of training — that’s reflected in a range starting at €50k. We want someone with real experience who is excited to grow into running Kubernetes at scale.

We’re not looking for a perfect checklist or a specific background. We’re looking for experience, judgement, and a strong product mindset.

We know that careers are rarely linear. Career breaks, changes of direction, or coming from less traditional paths into engineering are all compatible with this role. If in doubt, tell us your story.

What you’ll grow into over the next months

• Running Kubernetes (AWS EKS) in production with confidence.
• Making technical decisions that go beyond your own code, across complex, multi-team systems.

Technologies

• Infrastructure as Code: Terraform as the primary IaC tool to provision, manage, and evolve cloud infrastructure.
• Containers & orchestration: Docker containers running on AWS ECS and Kubernetes (AWS EKS) in production.
• Cloud: AWS as the main cloud provider, across a broad range of managed services.
• Languages & tooling: Bash, Python, and a little Go for building internal tools, automation, and services.
• AI-assisted engineering: Claude Code and other AI tools for building internal tooling and improving the developer experience across teams.

AI at Audiense

At Audiense, AI is not just a product feature; it’s also part of how we build software. We use AI to enhance our products, improve user experience, and accelerate how we deliver value. In the SRE Platform team specifically, they use AI, and Claude Code in particular, to build a lot of internal tools that streamline their daily routines and improve the experience of other Developer teams.

At the same time, engineering teams actively incorporate AI-powered tools and workflows into their daily work, from exploration and prototyping to development and validation.

We see AI as an enabler, not a goal in itself. What matters to us is its real impact on product quality, learning speed, and the effectiveness of our teams.

Our Engineering Principles

The way the SRE Platform team works is aligned with Audiense’s Product & Engineering Principles, which guide decision-making across the company. Some of the principles that most shape the day-to-day work are:

• Ask Why – Always connect technical work to real user or business problems.
• WIP = 1 – Focus, collaboration, and incremental delivery over multitasking.
• Always Ready to Ship – Learn early by being ready to deliver at any time.
• Stay Sharp – Reduce cognitive load and invest in quality and continuous learning.
• Software Is a Means to an Outcome – Avoid unnecessary complexity; build what matters.
• Courage and Respect – Psychological safety, open communication, and thoughtful decision-making.

These principles are not decorative. They are used in onboarding, day-to-day decisions, reviews, and how work is assessed.

What We Offer

• Remote-first work with flexibility around location.
• Flexible working hours, based on trust and autonomy.
• Paid time off.
• Learning budget and dedicated learning time during working hours.
• A strong focus on work–life balance and long-term sustainability.
• Company-provided equipment for a comfortable setup.
• 1Password account for secure credential management.
• (Some benefits may vary depending on location and contract type.)

Final Note

If you are not sure whether your profile is the right fit, you can still apply and let us decide together. A short explanation of your context is enough; there is no need for a “perfect” application. We welcome people with different backgrounds and experiences, and we do not expect anyone to meet 100% of the criteria.