GCP Lead Engineer - Google Cloud Platform

Lead GCP Engineer - Contract

Rate: Up to £550 per day

Contract: 3 months Initially

Location: Light Hybrid - London

We're looking for an experienced Lead GCP Engineer to join a major enterprise technology programme within a complex, highly governed environment.

You’ll provide hands‑on technical leadership to an established engineering team, helping improve the reliability, scalability and engineering standards of a cloud platform while remaining actively involved in technical delivery.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Provide hands‑on technical leadership across a strategic GCP data and analytics platform
• Set technical direction and help shape the platform roadmap
• Design and deliver secure, scalable and resilient GCP solutions
• Mentor engineers and improve technical capability across the team
• Drive engineering standards and knowledge sharing
• Remain hands‑on with engineering delivery, troubleshooting and technical problem‑solving
• Lead solution design, technical reviews and engineering assurance
• Improve Terraform / Infrastructure as Code standards and reusable patterns
• Develop and enhance CI/CD and deployment automation
• Improve monitoring, observability, alerting and operational readiness
• Support cloud‑based data integration and analytical workloads
• Ensure solutions meet demanding security, governance and audit requirements
• Work with technical and business stakeholders to turn requirements into pragmatic solutions

What We’re Looking For

You’ll need significant hands‑on experience with:

• Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Terraform / Infrastructure as Code
• Cloud and Platform Engineering
• DevOps and CI/CD
• Production‑grade cloud environments
• Cloud security and governance
• Monitoring and observability
• Data platforms and data‑intensive applications
• BigQuery
• Python and SQL
• APIs and data integration
• Authentication and access management, including OAuth / OIDC

Most importantly, we’re looking for someone who is still technically hands‑on. This isn’t an Enterprise Architect or people‑management position – you’ll be expected to get involved in the engineering while providing leadership to others.

The Environment

You’ll be joining a large enterprise where technology operates within a highly regulated, governed and risk‑conscious environment.

Previous experience within sectors such as financial services, insurance, aviation or other regulated industries would therefore be particularly useful.

You’ll understand how to deliver at pace while navigating architectural governance, security controls, risk processes and audit requirements.

The Person

Technical capability is important, but we’re equally interested in how you operate.

You’ll need to be someone who:

• Takes ownership and gets things delivered
• Can mentor engineers without becoming detached from the technology
• Knows when to challenge and when to compromise
• Can navigate a large organisation with competing priorities
• Has the emotional intelligence to influence busy stakeholders
• Balances delivery speed with security, governance and engineering quality
• Can operate independently without needing constant direction