Lead Infrastructure Engineer

Are you a Lead Infrastructure Engineer ready to take ownership of a high-performing infrastructure team delivering secure, mission-critical services?

Sopra Steria is delivering a major greenfield programme for the Defence sector, building and integrating infrastructure and applications within highly secure environments. This is a rare opportunity to lead technical delivery on a nationally significant programme where the work you do has real purpose, scale, and impact.

We are looking for an experienced Lead Infrastructure Engineer to oversee the day-to-day technical operations of the Windows infrastructure team, reporting to the Head of Operating Systems. You will combine hands-on technical expertise with people leadership, helping to shape team capability, improve service quality, and ensure the successful delivery of infrastructure services and project outcomes.

This role would suit someone with strong Wintel and VMware experience, ideally gained within Defence, MoD, government, or similarly secure and regulated environments.

This role is full time on site in the Hertfordshire area.

What you will be doing:

• Lead, manage, and mentor the Windows infrastructure team, building capability and developing a strong SME structure.
• Oversee day-to-day technical operations, ensuring services are delivered in line with SLAs, governance, and security requirements.
• Support project delivery across solution design, estimation, detailed design, implementation, and service transition.
• Provide technical leadership across Wintel, VMware, virtualisation, messaging, file and print, thin client, and core infrastructure services.
• Work closely with architects, solution designers, project managers, and stakeholders to validate solutions, provide recommendations, and report progress.
• Maintain high-quality technical documentation, operational procedures, and governance artefacts to support consistent delivery.

What you will bring:

• Strong experience leading infrastructure teams within complex enterprise or secure environments.
• Expert knowledge of Wintel infrastructure technologies, including Windows Server, Active Directory, Group Policy, DNS, DHCP, and core platform services.
• Hands-on experience with VMware, virtualisation, hardware, messaging, file and print, and thin client environments.
• Proven experience supporting infrastructure projects from design and estimation through to implementation and operational handover.
• Strong service management experience, including working to demanding SLAs, governance, compliance, and change control processes.
• Ability to lead, mentor, and influence technical teams while building trusted relationships with stakeholders.

It would be great if you had:

• Experience working in Defence, MoD, government, or other highly regulated environments.
• PRINCE2, PMI, ITIL, Microsoft, VMware, or other relevant technical certifications.
• Experience contributing to pre-sales, bids, technical assurance, or service improvement activity.
• Exposure to automation, monitoring, backup, storage, or wider infrastructure tooling.

If you are interested in this role but not sure if your skills and experience are exactly what we're looking for, please do apply, we'd love to hear from you!

Employment Type: Full-time, Permanent

Location: Hertfordshire

Security Clearance Level: Eligible for Developed Vetting (DV)

Internal Recruiter: Josh

Salary: Competitive, based on experience

Benefits: £5,400 car allowance, 3% cash fund, 25 days annual leave with the option to buy additional days, health cash plan, life assurance, pension

Loved reading about this job and want to know more about us?

Sopra Steria's Aerospace, Defence and Security business designs, develops and deploys digital solutions to Central Government clients. The work we do makes a real difference to the client's goal of National Security, and we operate in a unique and privileged environment. We are given time for professional development activities, and we coach and mentor our colleagues, sharing knowledge and learning from each other. We foster a culture in which employees feel valued and supported and have pride in their work for the customer, delivering outstanding rates of customer satisfaction in the UK's most complex safety- and security-critical markets.