Senior DevOps Engineer

Senior DevOps Engineer

12-Month contract - Inside IR35 - market rate

Manchester based - hybrid working - 2-3 days onsite

Banking sector

Key accountabilities

• Kubernetes and OpenShift platforms. Accountable for the design, resilience, security and operation of the Kubernetes and OpenShift platforms in their area, including upgrades, capacity and recovery.
• Infrastructure as code. Sets the Terraform standards, module design and promotion approach, so that infrastructure changes are consistent, tested and auditable.
• Internal developer platform. Leads the evolution of the IDP, including Backstage catalogue, templates, plugins and golden paths, and drives adoption by product teams.
• Continuous delivery. Sets the approach to continuous delivery for core banking, balancing speed with the bank's change and risk requirements.
• Observability and reliability. Sets the observability approach, covering metrics, telemetry, SLIs and SLOs, error budgets and runbook automation, and prioritises improvements that best protect service levels.
• Platform engineering. Accountable for treating the platform as a product, with clear outcomes, roadmap, feedback loops and cost control.
• Control engineering. Accountable for building the bank's resilience, security, change and audit controls into platforms and pipelines as automated, evidenced checks.
• People and capability. Develops the capabilities of engineers, and promotes good practice across the organisation.

ResponsibilitiesTechnical leadership and platform delivery

• Designs the architecture of Kubernetes and OpenShift platforms for core banking, including multi-cluster and multi-region resilience, tenancy, security policy, networking and disaster recovery.
• Sets Terraform standards, including module design, state strategy, testing, policy checks and safe promotion across environments.
• Leads the Backstage and IDP roadmap, including software templates, catalogue quality, plugins and golden paths, and measures adoption and developer experience.
• Designs CI/CD and GitOps patterns for core banking, including progressive delivery, rollback, release governance and supply chain security.
• Breaks down large pieces of work, shapes the technical roadmap with product owners and architects, and flags risks and dependencies early.
• Leads the resolution of major incidents and complex platform problems, and drives the follow-up improvements.
• Reviews designs, code and changes, and challenges them constructively.
• Works with architecture, security, risk, audit, application and operations teams across the bank.

Observability and reliability

• Sets the observability approach, including metrics, telemetry, logging and tracing standards and the tools behind them.
• Defines SLIs and SLOs with service owners, uses error budgets to prioritise reliability work, and reports service health to senior stakeholders.
• Leads runbook automation, including automated diagnosis and remediation, and reduces manual toil and mean time to recover.
• Plans capacity, performance and resilience, and leads failover and recovery testing.

Control engineering and governance

• Leads the design of automated controls for resilience, security, change and audit, using policy as code, automated scanning, approval gates and evidence capture.
• Works with risk, security and audit teams to turn control requirements into automated, testable checks, and shows regulators and auditors how the controls work.
• Identifies and escalates technology risks, and applies the bank's change management, security and regulatory standards.
• Identifies shortcomings in existing processes, systems and procedures, and leads improvements.

People and capability

• Mentors and coaches engineers, and supports their growth within the existing development framework.
• Provides specialised training or coaching in their area of expertise to others throughout the organisation.
• Helps with hiring, interviewing and onboarding.
• Grows their own capabilities by pursuing and investing in personal development opportunities.

Experience

Essential

• Extensive professional experience in DevOps, platform engineering or site reliability engineering, running critical production systems at scale.
• Deep hands-on experience of Kubernetes or OpenShift, Terraform and continuous delivery.
• Proven record of designing observability, SLOs and runbook automation, and of improving reliability.
• Proven experience of building automated controls into delivery and platforms in a regulated environment.
• Experience of leading technical design, and of mentoring or coaching engineers.
• Clear communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders, including senior stakeholders, risk and audit.

Desirable

• Experience in a Tier 1 bank, and with core banking or other critical systems.
• Experience of building and running an internal developer platform, including Backstage.
• Experience of GitOps, policy as code and supply chain security at scale.
• Certification such as CKA, CKS, Red Hat OpenShift, Terraform Authoring and Operations Professional, or a cloud architect certification.
• Experience of leading cross-team technical change and of working with regulators or auditors.
• Experience of hiring and developing engineers.
• A relevant degree, or equivalent experience.

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