Platform Engineer

The Barbour story began in 1894 in South Shields in the North East of England. Founder John Barbour began supplying oilskins and other garments to protect the growing community of sailors, fishermen, and dockers. Still family-owned and now fifth-generation, Barbour HQ remains in South Shields. Under the leadership of Chairman Dame Margaret Barbour, Barbour has grown into a lifestyle brand sold in over 55 countries worldwide. The iconic Barbour Bedale and Barbour Beaufort wax jackets continue to be made by hand in the factory in South Shields. In 2020, Barbour launched "Wax for Life," an initiative designed to encourage customers to extend the life of their wax garments through re-waxing, repairs, and upcycling.

Position Overview

The Platform Engineer is responsible for the stability, security, resilience, and operational integrity of Barbour’s core business platforms. These platforms underpin critical business processes, data flows, reporting, and operational decision‑making across the global organisation. The role focuses on platform reliability, controlled change, and service continuity, ensuring systems are supportable, recoverable, and scalable in line with business needs.

The role is based at head office in South Shields, with an expectation of 4 days in the office and 1 day of home‑working.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Platform Reliability & Operations: Proactively identify and address performance, capacity, and availability risks while leading incident investigations and root cause analysis.
• Engineering Standards: Design, implement, and maintain secure, resilient platform configurations in line with vendor best practices and internal policies.
• Change & Quality Control: Ensure platform changes are safely reviewed, tested, and deployed, including rollback and recovery approaches.
• Security & Governance: Implement secure access controls using least‑privilege principles and support compliance with standards such as GDPR and PCI‑DSS.
• Environment Management: Promote consistency between development, test, and production environments using source control and structured deployment methods.
• Monitoring & Recovery: Ensure effective logging and alerting is in place; define and test backup and recovery processes and contribute to disaster recovery planning.
• Collaboration: Work closely with application, data, and BI teams to ensure platforms meet business needs and maintain documentation to reduce single‑person dependency.

Skills and Experience

• Qualifications: Degree in Computer Science (or equivalent experience) and relevant certifications in Microsoft platform administration (Azure, SQL Server) or infrastructure technologies.
• Platform Expertise: Demonstrable experience supporting business‑critical platforms, specifically the administration and optimisation of Microsoft SQL Server environments.
• Data Integration: Experience building and maintaining data integration pipelines using SSIS and a working knowledge of SSRS and Power BI.
• Technical Proficiency: Experience with scripting and automation (PowerShell, SQL, Python) and familiarity with SQL code quality tools like SQL Prompt.
• Operational Excellence: Proven ability to diagnose complex incidents, manage controlled change processes, and implement technical security controls.
• Communication: Ability to explain technical risks to non‑technical stakeholders and work effectively within cross‑functional teams.
• Discretionary Company bonus scheme
• Staff discount and Staff shop
• 25 days holiday (increasing with service) plus bank holidays
• Access to training and career development activities
• Free onsite parking and subsidised canteen
• Hybrid and flexible working, including a 4pm finish on Fridays
• Wellbeing support and Reward & Recognition programs

Note: In the event that a sufficient volume of suitable applications are received, the post may close prior to the specified closing date. Please apply as soon as possible if interested.