Rate: £550/day (Inside IR35)

About The Role We are seeking an experienced OpenShift Platform Architect / Lead OpenShift Engineer on a contract basis to support architecture, design, and migration initiatives. You will lead the design and operationalisation of OpenShift platforms, enabling application teams to migrate workloads efficiently across on-premises and hybrid environments.

This is a hands-on, strategic role where you’ll define platform architecture, migration strategies, security patterns, and automation practices, while providing technical leadership to engineering teams.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture & Reference Design: Own OpenShift platform architecture (cluster topology, multi-cluster strategy, tenancy model, shared services) and establish landing zone standards for onboarding applications.

Migration Strategy & Delivery: Lead migration programmes from legacy platforms or earlier OpenShift versions, creating runbooks, cutover plans, rollback procedures, and hypercare criteria.

Security & Compliance: Define and enforce RBAC, network policies, secure configuration standards, and audit-ready operational processes.

Platform Engineering & Automation: Implement Infrastructure-as-Code and automation strategies using Terraform, Ansible, or equivalents; develop reusable modules and CI/CD integrations.

Observability & Performance: Define metrics, logging, and alerting standards (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK or equivalents); provide guidance on cluster sizing, scaling, and cost management.

Stakeholder Management & Leadership: Provide architectural guidance, mentor teams, maintain high-quality documentation, and collaborate with global teams.

Essential Experience Hands-on experience designing, operating, and upgrading OpenShift clusters in on-premises and hybrid environments.

Proven experience leading migration programmes to OpenShift (planning, onboarding patterns, cutover/rollback).

Familiarity with IaC, automation tools, and enterprise observability solutions.

This contract offers a chance to take ownership of platform architecture and migration in a dynamic hybrid environment, delivering high-impact results while shaping the future of the platform.