Lead DevOps Engineer

Overview

In this role you will define and drive the next-generation DevOps and platform strategy to enable scalable, secure, and autonomous systems. You will lead a growing DevOps team, partner with Engineering, Security, and Data teams, and elevate reliability across a multi-site Kubernetes footprint. You’ll balance hands-on delivery with people leadership, shaping culture, governance, and continuous improvement. This is a mission-critical opportunity to push high-availability workflows while enabling rapid, secure software delivery.

Pay / Benefits

• Hybrid working
• Remote working budget
• Learning & Development budget
• 25 days annual leave + bank holidays
• Enhanced parental leave
• Private Health Insurance

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the DevOps and Platform Engineering roadmap for automation, scaling, and multi-tenant Kubernetes‑based IDP
• Lead and mentor DevOps engineers, set technical benchmarks for Kubernetes and CNCF-aligned infrastructure
• Architect and operate multi-cluster, multi-region Kubernetes environments with Istio/Linkerd, Cluster API, and Kyverno
• Design and deploy GitOps‑driven progressive delivery using Flux/Flagger with canary and A/B deployments
• Implement infrastructure provisioning controllers (Crossplane, ACK) for Kubernetes-native cloud integration
• Enforce Zero Trust with Vault, Boundary, service identity, and secure service mesh mTLS
• Develop policy‑driven automation and compliance with OPA, Kyverno, and secure supply chain configurations
• Maintain IaC and GitOps standards with automated testing for infrastructure changes
• Prototype agentic infrastructure components and AI gateway/registry concepts within Kubernetes
• Champion DevSecOps maturity through SAST/DAST, chaos engineering, and error budget tracking
• Collaborate cross-functionally to align DevOps with AI and regulatory requirements
• Continuously research CNCF and AI ecosystem advancements to keep DevOps innovative

Key requirements

• Production experience with platform engineering and DevOps leadership
• Deep Kubernetes expertise including lifecycle management, Operators, Helm, CNCF ecosystem
• Strong knowledge of service meshes, policy-based workload placement, and eBPF observability
• Proficiency with Terraform, Crossplane, ACK, or similar controllers for cloud-native provisioning
• Experience with GitOps pipelines (ArgoCD or FluxCD) and automated drift correction
• Security-focused automation and compliance tooling (Vault, Boundary, OPA, Kyverno)
• CI/CD design with SAST/DAST, observability, and incident response engineering
• Programming skills in Go, Python, or TypeScript
• Open-source contributions or leadership in CNCF projects
• Experience with AI-enabled developer platforms or agent-based architectures (bonus)

• Leadership and people management
• Strategic thinking with hands-on execution
• Collaborative cross-functional communication
• Kubernetes (multi-cluster, multi-region)
• Istio/Linkerd service meshes
• Cluster API, Kyverno, Cilium

…