Principal DevOps Engineer

• Provide strategic direction for Azure DevOps practices across multiple engineering squads. 

• Have proven experience designing and implementing cloud architectures 

• Coach and mentor engineers, providing technical guidance to the Engineering teams, nurturing a collaborative and innovative environment. 

• Act as a design authority, ensuring that all new DevOps initiatives align with the overall strategic vision to best serve the goals of the business. 

• Collaborate with engineering squads to design, implement, and optimize CI/CD pipelines. 

• Ensure design/change (DevOps) and execution is aligned and working to best practices around scalability, security, and reliability of the DevOps infrastructure. 

• Enable engineering teams with standardisation and knowledge sharing od DevOps resources. 

• Foster a culture of continuous improvement and automation. 

• Stay up to date with industry trends and advancements in DevOps practices and Azure services. 

• Lead technical discussions and review sessions to ensure alignment and adherence to DevOps standards. 

• Evaluate and recommend tools, technologies, and processes to enhance the DevOps workflow. 

Essential 

We’re looking for people with the following skills:  

• Minimum of 8 years of experience in DevOps, with at least 5 years focusing on Azure DevOps as an engineer, technical lead, architect or other related technical cloud-focused role. 

• Experience working with Microsoft Azure with knowledge of cloud-native services (Azure DNS, Application Gateway, Azure SQL Server, App Services, Blob Storage, Load Balancer, WAF) and best-practices for working with technology. 

• An understanding of technologies that underpin a DevOps approach to cloud transformation and management, including but not exclusive to, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, Containerisation and Orchestration, CI/CD. 

• Experience with infrastructure as code (IaC) tools such as Terraform or ARM templates. 

• Proficiency in scripting languages such as PowerShell, Python, or Bash. 

• Deep knowledge of containerization technologies, including Docker and Kubernetes. 

• Excellent understanding of networking principles (IP addressing, virtual networks, network security and networking models). 

• Understanding of observability and site-reliability principles (SLO’s, SLI’s) and working with engineering teams to improve the applications and platform. 

• Good understanding of SQL and working with relational databases. 

• Experience working in a production environment to support, operate and maintain applications. 

• Experience working with logging tools (e.g. Log Analytics, Datadog) and monitoring (e.g. Azure Monitor) and application performance management tools (we use New Relic). 

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and guide engineering teams. 

• Proven track record of leading and delivering complex DevOps projects. 

• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, collaborative environment. 

• Relevant certifications such as Azure DevOps Engineer Expert, Azure Solutions Architect, or similar are a plus. 

Desirable 

Ideally you will have:  

• Some knowledge of common programming languages (Java, Javascript, Go). 

• An understanding of data engineering infrastructure, data processing and presentation. 

• Experience of Cyber Security Essentials or similar certification. 

• Experience in vulnerability management (e.g. Phishing, social engineering, malware etc.). 

• Experience of single sign-on products (e.g. Auth Zero, SAP Gigya).