Senior DevOps Engineer

12-Month contract - Inside IR35 - market rate

Manchester based - hybrid working - 2-3 days onsite

Banking sector

• 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.

Technical 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.

Disclaimer:

This vacancy is being advertised by either Advanced Resource Managers Limited, Advanced Resource Managers IT Limited or Advanced Resource Managers Engineering Limited ("ARM"). ARM is a specialist talent acquisition and management consultancy. We provide technical contingency recruitment and a portfolio of more complex resource solutions. Our specialist recruitment divisions cover the entire technical arena, including some of the most economically and strategically important industries in the UK and the world today. We will never send your CV without your permission. Where the role is marked as Outside IR35 in the advertisement this is subject to receipt of a final Status Determination Statement from the end Client and may be subject to change.