Lead DevOps Engineer - Contract - 12 Months - SC Cleared

Contract Details

• Contract Length: 12 months
• Rate: £600 per day
• IR35 Status: Inside IR35
• Location: Remote (UK-based)
• Sector: UK Government/Public Sector

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Lead DevOps Engineer to support a large-scale UK Government programme. This role will lead the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of secure, scalable, and resilient cloud infrastructure and DevOps practices.

You will work closely with engineering teams, security stakeholders, and delivery leads to enable modern, automated software delivery while ensuring compliance with government security and operational standards.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of DevOps and cloud-native solutions for mission-critical government services
• Define, implement, and govern CI/CD pipelines to support secure and frequent deployments
• Own infrastructure-as-code (IaC) practices and standards across environments
• Act as a technical leader and mentor for DevOps engineers within delivery teams
• Collaborate with development, architecture, security, and operations teams
• Ensure platforms meet government security, resilience, and compliance requirements
• Drive automation, monitoring, and reliability improvements
• Support incident response, root cause analysis, and continuous service improvement
• Contribute to technical documentation and architectural decision records

Essential Skills & Experience

• Strong experience as a Lead or Senior DevOps Engineer on complex platforms
• Proven experience delivering solutions within UK Government or regulated environments
• Extensive hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS and/or Azure)
• Strong infrastructure-as-code expertise (Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM, Bicep, etc.)
• CI/CD tooling experience (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, etc.)
• Containerisation and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift, EKS/AKS)
• Linux systems administration and Scripting (Bash, Python, etc.)
• Monitoring and logging solutions (Prometheus, Grafana, Azure Monitor, CloudWatch, ELK)
• Experience embedding security-by-design into DevOps workflows

Desirable Skills

• Experience with GDS standards and public sector delivery frameworks
• Knowledge of NCSC/cloud security principles
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum delivery teams
• Familiarity with service management (ITIL, SRE practices)
• Active or previous UK security clearance (SC highly desirable)

Personal Attributes

• Strong leadership and stakeholder engagement skills
• Comfortable working in complex, multi-supplier environments
• Pragmatic, delivery-focused, and able to balance pace with governance
• Excellent communication skills, both technical and non-technical

What's on Offer

• Long-term 12-month contract on a high-impact government programme
• Competitive £600/day inside IR35 rate
• Fully remote working (UK-based)
• Opportunity to shape DevOps capability on a nationally significant project