Innovation Platform Engineer

About the role

Freshfields, a global law firm, is seeking an experienced Innovation Platform Engineer to help shape and build the technology platforms that underpin innovation across the firm. This is a hands-on engineering role focused on designing, engineering and operationalising secure, scalable cloud environments and innovation services across Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), supporting AI, automation and digital transformation initiatives. The role works closely with Innovation, Enterprise Architecture, Security, Infrastructure and Product teams.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the development of the firm's innovation platform across Azure and GCP, including reusable cloud architectures, landing zones, deployment pipelines and shared engineering services.
• Build secure, scalable, automated cloud environments using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and DevSecOps, and set engineering standards and technical guardrails.
• Implement monitoring, observability and support capabilities, and develop and optimise CI/CD pipelines across multi-cloud environments.
• Partner with engineering and operational teams to move prototypes into production, and support platform governance, resilience and cost optimisation.
• Design and build prototypes and proof-of-concept solutions, document technical designs and architecture decisions, and help assess solutions in the innovation pipeline.
• Engineer AI-enabled solutions using Azure AI, Vertex AI and large language models, and evaluate emerging technologies for practical application.
• Work with stakeholders and partners with Enterprise Architecture, Security, Data and Infrastructure teams, and support testing, adoption and production readiness.

Required profile

• Strong engineering experience across Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, building and managing cloud-native platforms.
• Hands-on experience with AI engineering platforms, large language models and orchestration frameworks.
• Ability to explain technical concepts clearly to technical and non-technical audiences and to thrive in fast-moving environments.
• Experience in legal services or professional services is advantageous but not essential.

Required skills

• Infrastructure as Code, automation and platform engineering practices.
• CI/CD pipelines and DevSecOps.
• Docker and Kubernetes.
• API-driven architectures and integration of enterprise security controls.
• GitHub, Azure DevOps and automated deployment pipelines.
• Familiarity with Power Platform, Zapier, Make or other low-code/no-code tools.