Lead DevOps Engineer

Job Description

Lead the platform engineering function for a major UK client, owning the technical direction, delivery and reliability of a critical cloud platform. You will shape the multi-year roadmap, mentor a team of engineers, and act as the senior technical point of contact.

You will lead a team responsible for designing, building and operating a large-scale AWS platform, working closely with the customer and internal delivery teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor and develop the platform engineering team, covering resourcing, recruitment, performance management and on-call rota design.
• Own the platform across all environments, setting the multi-year technical direction and roadmap, including Kubernetes and service mesh upgrades, lifecycle management and architectural improvements.
• Design, build and operate AWS infrastructure as code using Terraform, and run modern container platforms including Amazon EKS, Karpenter, Istio and GitOps-based deployment.
• Own the reliability and performance of CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, Argo CD), ensuring fast, secure, repeatable releases with automated testing, quality gates and rollback.
• Drive platform availability, resilience and disaster recovery, including backup and restore testing, failover and incident response leadership, supported by observability and alerting (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, OpenSearch, CloudWatch).
• Manage external SOC providers and be accountable for technical security and compliance, including vulnerability management, patching, penetration test remediation, access control and secrets management.
• Lead FinOps and cost optimisation, covering budgets, tagging, reporting, right-sizing, non-production scheduling and commitment-based savings.
• Act as the senior technical point of contact for the customer, presenting designs, risks, incidents, cost and roadmap, while working with product, delivery and architecture teams on release planning and capacity forecasting.

Qualifications

Essential Qualifications:

• Significant experience in DevOps, platform or SRE roles, including leading and developing engineering teams.
• Expert-level AWS knowledge across compute, networking, data, security and edge services, running large-scale production workloads.
• Strong hands-on experience with Kubernetes in production (ideally Amazon EKS), including service mesh, autoscaling and GitOps deployment.
• Deep proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and an "everything as code" approach.
• Proven experience owning reliable, secure CI/CD pipelines (e.g. Azure DevOps, Argo CD) with automated quality gates.
• Strong grounding in observability, incident management, resilience and disaster recovery in a 24/7 service environment.
• Working knowledge of security and compliance practices, including vulnerability management and managing external technical providers.
• Demonstrated FinOps and cloud cost optimisation experience, balancing cost, performance and resilience.
• Excellent communicator, confident presenting to customers, senior stakeholders and technical teams, with the ability to set technical direction over a multi-year period.
• A calm, hands-on and credible leader who stays decisive under pressure and drives continuous improvement.
• Hold one of the following AWS certifications as a minimum:
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
  • AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
  • AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate

Desirable Qualficiations:

• Experience working in an ITIL aligned environment.
• Terraform or FinOps Practitioner certifications
• Experience working in public sector or regulated environments.
• Familiarity with ISO 27001 or Cyber Essentials Plus.

Additional Information

Build on your experience and keep developing

Your development continues through the responsibility you take, the projects you lead and the people you learn from.

As part of a structured career model, you’ll build on the experience you already bring, supported by a personal mentor from the leadership group who can help guide your professional development, career direction and personal goals. Through this dialogue, you will gain insight into business areas, responsibilities and opportunities that match your ambitions.

You’ll also take part in Netcompany Academy, with courses and seminars tailored to your career stage. Led by experienced colleagues, the content is built around the skills needed to deliver, lead and grow in our project environment. Learning alongside colleagues from across the company also helps you build a strong professional network.

Be part of a shared community

Community is built through the way we work together.

You’ll join teams where collaboration, trust and support are part of everyday work. We bring together colleagues with different backgrounds, identities, cultures and experiences, ensuring everyone is met with respect and has equal opportunities to develop and thrive.

You’ll collaborate with colleagues across countries, disciplines and business areas, sharing knowledge and solving complex challenges together. Through both professional and social events, you can build strong connections across the organisation and contribute to an international community shaped by shared responsibility and ambition.

Driven by responsible digitalisation

We believe digitalisation creates the most value when it is done responsibly.

We build solutions that are secure, transparent, and designed to create lasting impact for people, businesses, and society. Responsibility is embedded in how we design, develop, and deliver every solution.

Benefits include

• Hybrid working model with some flexible working
• 25 days’ holiday
• Private Medical Health care via Vitality
• Pension contribution, Life Assurance
• Professional certifications supported as part of learning and development.
• A range of retail discounts to enhance your lifestyle, encompassing restaurants, supermarkets, travel, leisure activities and health and well-being services.
• Access to our Employee Resource Groups, our groups represent diverse backgrounds and provide a platform for colleagues to connect, learn, and support one another.

Company information

We pride ourselves on our entrepreneurial spirit and our capacity for doing things differently. Our culture is built on fostering low bureaucracy, emphasizing high agility and promoting flexibility, enabling everyone to contribute their best.

Netcompany is committed to providing an inclusive and barrier-free recruitment process for anyone wishing to apply for a job with us. We operate a Disability Confident Interview Scheme which means that we offer guaranteed interviews to all applicants with a disability who meet the minimum criteria for a role. Applicants are asked to opt in, so please let us know if you wish your application to be considered under this scheme.

If you need any reasonable adjustments or extra support during the recruitment process, please contact us at [email protected].

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