Cloud Engineer AWS

Unite Foundation; Bristol; On-site; GBP 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading student accommodation provider is seeking a Senior Cloud Engineer with a focus on AWS to join their IT Operations team in Bristol. This role involves designing, building, and operating AWS infrastructure, leading DevOps practices, and supporting development teams. It offers a great opportunity to influence cloud standards and improve platform reliability. Along with a competitive salary, the position includes a discretionary bonus, generous holidays, and comprehensive benefits to support employee wellbeing.

Benefits

Annual discretionary bonus

25 days paid holiday

Generous pension scheme

Healthcare Cash Plan

Enhanced Family Leave

Annual ShareSave scheme

Qualifications

• Significant experience working as a Cloud or Platform Engineer
• Proven hands-on experience designing and operating AWS services
• Strong experience with Infrastructure as Code and automation tools
• Experience building and supporting CI/CD pipelines
• Ability to influence technical decisions and promote best practices

Responsibilities

• Act as a senior technical authority for AWS-based platforms and services
• Design, build, and operate secure AWS infrastructure using automation
• Develop and improve CI/CD pipelines and DevOps tooling
• Provide hands-on support and guidance to development teams
• Lead monitoring, logging, alerting, and operational tooling implementation

Skills

AWS Services (EC2, VPC, IAM, RDS, S3, Lambda)

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible)

CI/CD pipelines

Agile methodologies

Troubleshooting cloud infrastructure

Clear communication

Job description

Unite Students are looking for a Cloud Engineer (AWS Focused) to join the IT Operations team, focused on building, operating, and evolving cloud platforms that enable product and engineering teams to deliver services faster, safer, and more reliably at Unite Students.

You`ll act as a senior technical specialist for AWS, combining deep hands-on expertise with platform ownership, automation, and DevOps best practice. The role spans cloud design, engineering, and operational support, with a strong focus on reliability, security, scalability, and continuous improvement.

This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced AWS engineer who enjoys enabling others, shaping cloud standards, and working at the intersection of operations, engineering, and digital transformation.

What You`ll Be Doing

• Acting as a senior technical authority for AWS-based platforms and services, providing design leadership and 3rd line support.
• Designing, building, and operating secure, scalable, and resilient AWS infrastructure using automation and Infrastructure as Code.
• Developing and improving CI/CD pipelines, deployment patterns, and DevOps tooling to support engineering teams.
• Providing hands‑on support and guidance to development teams, including troubleshooting complex cloud and platform issues.
• Leading the implementation of monitoring, logging, alerting, and operational tooling to improve platform reliability and insight.
• Supporting cloud security, governance, and cost optimisation, ensuring platforms are compliant and well controlled.
• Contributing to disaster recovery, backup, and business continuity solutions for cloud-hosted services.
• Producing and maintaining high‑quality documentation, standards, and reusable platform patterns.
• Mentoring engineers and sharing cloud and DevOps best practice across IT and engineering teams.
• Participating in the general Infrastructure on‑call rota and acting as a senior escalation point for AWS‑related incidents, so wider Infrastructure Experience is desirable.

What We`re Looking for in You

• Significant experience working as a Cloud or Platform Engineer with a strong focus on AWS in an enterprise environment, but ability to bolster Azure support is desirable.
• Proven hands‑on experience designing and operating AWS services such as EC2, VPC, IAM, RDS, S3, Lambda, and container platforms.
• Strong experience with Infrastructure as Code and automation tools (e.g. Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible).
• Experience building and supporting CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices in a production environment.
• Confidence operating in Agile and DevOps‑led teams, supporting multiple engineering streams.
• Strong troubleshooting and problem‑solving skills across cloud infrastructure and distributed systems.
• Ability to influence technical decisions and promote best practice without direct authority.
• Clear communication skills, able to work effectively with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• A proactive mindset with a strong desire to improve platforms, reliability, and developer experience.
• A full UK driving licence and flexibility to travel occasionally when required.

What You`ll Get in Return

• A discretionary annual bonus so you can share in the company`s success
• 25 days` paid holiday and an annual holiday buying scheme, with 5 additional days awarded for long service
• A generous pension scheme - employer contributions between 5% and 11% depending on how much you save
• Various benefits to support your health and wellbeing including a Healthcare Cash Plan, an Employee Assistance Programme, a Wellbeing platform and a Gym benefit that you can share with your family and friends
• Enhanced Family Leave including 18 weeks full pay for birthing parents and 4 weeks for non‑birthing parents
• Lots of other great benefits including an annual ShareSave scheme, Employee Life Assurance, a discounts portal and more!

About Unite Students

Founded in 1991, Unite Students is the UK`s leading provider of purpose‑built student accommodation. You can find us in 23 leading university towns and cities, with 70,000 students calling US home! We are driven by our values, culture, and a commitment to develop diverse and inclusive teams, filled with positive energy and new ideas.

Instinctive inclusion.

We know that to create and maintain a happy healthy organisation, we have to work hard to ensure inclusion isn`t just what we do but who we are.

People make Unite Students.

Employees, students and neighbours all contribute to building environments where we can all thrive.

Room for Everyone

We`re proud to be an employer that embraces individuality, and we`re passionate about building inclusive teams. We focus on creating a collaborative culture where you can be you, where your voice is heard, and where you can truly belong. We take great pride in being rated Gold Investors in People and are constantly striving to provide the highest standard of learning and development opportunities and professional pathways for our people. Building a home for success, for both our employees and students, requires exceptional people with a passion for creating room for everyone, doing what`s right, keeping US safe, and raising the bar. Join us as we build better experiences for students that live with us.