Lead DevOps Engineer

My client is looking for a Lead DevOps Engineer to define and drive platform engineering practices that enable secure, scalable, and automated environments across data, AI, and application workloads.

This is a hands-on leadership role, responsible for setting standards across CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, Kubernetes/OpenShift, observability, and security, while ensuring engineering teams can deliver efficiently within a governed and resilient platform.

You will act as a key bridge between Infrastructure, Security, DataOps, and Platform Engineering teams, helping to establish automation, reliability, and compliance as core principles across the organisation.

Key Responsibilities:

Platform Engineering & Architecture:

• Define and enforce DevOps standards across CI/CD, IaC, and container orchestration
• Design, build, and operate Kubernetes/OpenShift clusters in hybrid and on-prem environments
• Own cluster lifecycle management, including upgrades, scaling, networking, storage integration, and resilience
• Champion DevOps best practices across a hybrid architecture (Azure + on-prem)

Automation & CI/CD:

• Standardise and optimise CI/CD frameworks (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions)
• Drive adoption of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible) across all environments
• Enable automated, consistent, and scalable deployments across platforms

Observability & Reliability

• Establish observability frameworks (metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, alerting)
• Define SLOs/SLAs and ensure platform reliability and performance
• Oversee incident management, runbooks, and automated remediation strategies

Security & Governance:

• Embed security-first practices including RBAC, secrets management, encryption, and vulnerability scanning
• Ensure compliance with PHI/PII regulations through secure platform design
• Support auditability and traceability across all deployments
• Contribute to platform governance and design authority forums

Leadership & Collaboration:

• Mentor and develop DevOps engineers, raising platform maturity and best practices
• Collaborate with DataOps, AI/ML, and Engineering teams to support scalable delivery
• Partner with Infrastructure and Security teams to implement shared services and guardrails

Required Experience & Skills:

• 10+ years’ experience in DevOps / Platform Engineering, with 5+ years in a leadership role
• Strong hands-on expertise in Kubernetes and OpenShift (cluster operations and lifecycle management)
• Deep experience with CI/CD tools (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions)
• Advanced knowledge of Terraform and Ansible (Infrastructure as Code)
• Strong Linux systems experience in hybrid and on-prem environments
• Experience implementing observability tools (e.g. Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, OpenTelemetry)
• Solid understanding of security frameworks (RBAC, secrets management, compliance)
• Proven track record delivering enterprise-scale, cloud-native platforms

Nice to Have:

• Experience working with data and AI platforms (e.g. Databricks, Kafka, Airflow, MLflow)
• Exposure to hybrid infrastructure (Azure + on-prem storage such as MinIO or VAST)
• Experience contributing to architecture governance or design councils

Please apply to be contacted with further information.

Salt is acting as an Employment Agency in relation to this vacancy.