CO Lead DevOps Engineer Collinsongroup · London · DevOps & Release Pay not stated 2w ago

Devopsroles; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Collinson Group seeks a Lead DevOps Engineer to own the design, reliability, scalability, security and cost efficiency of a production platform. This hands-on leadership role focuses on a zero-downtime, multi-region AWS environment running Kubernetes and serverless workloads, with AI-enabled layers at scale.

You will set technical direction, mentor engineers, own platform SLAs, and drive security, resilience and developer experience while partnering with cross-functional teams.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise with AWS at scale including EKS, Lambda, EC2, RDS/Aurora and multi-region networking.
• Proven ownership of a production-grade EKS platform with zero-downtime deployments using blue/green and canary strategies.
• Terraform IaC standards ownership and automated deployments.
• Authority on CI/CD pipelines with fast, secure, auditable releases and strong developer experience.
• Experience embedding AI into SDLC workflows and CI/CD pipelines.
• Hands-on disaster recovery experience with automated backup, multi-region failover and defined RTO/RPO targets.
• Comfortable in security audits, compliance and risk discussions.
• Observability ownership with Datadog, defining SLOs and dashboards, alerting culture.
• Experience mentoring DevOps engineers and growing teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end reliability, stability and performance of the production platform.
• Enforce SLAs across availability, security posture and resilience.
• Drive incident response standards and thresholds for the team.
• Run and maintain a multi-region, zero-downtime platform.
• Own deployment strategies (blue/green, canary) and traffic management for continuous availability.
• Own the platform security posture end to end: IAM, KMS, secrets management, vulnerability management & PCI DSS/CIS compliance.
• Collaborate with security teams and act as DevOps authority on audits and risk.
• Lead disaster recovery automation, testing and continuous improvement.
• Drive total cost of ownership strategy with clear cost-allocation visibility.
• Set IaC standards and promote automation to reduce manual tasks.
• Define observability strategy using Datadog and build SLO dashboards and runbooks.
• Lead and grow the DevOps team, setting direction and mentoring engineers.
• Drive AI-assisted operations into CI/CD pipelines and developer tooling.

Skills

AWS at scale

EKS (Automode)

ArgoCD

Istio

Blue/Green & Canary

Terraform

CI/CD pipelines

AI in SDLC

DR planning

Security audits & risk

Datadog observability

Mentoring / team leadership

Python, Bash, Ansible, Helm, GitHub A?

Tools

ArgoCD

Istio

Terraform

GitHub Actions

Datadog

KMS

Job description

Job Description

The Role

As Lead DevOps Engineer, you will own the design, reliability, scalability, security and cost efficiency of our production platform: a zero-downtime, multi-region AWS environment running Kubernetes and serverless workloads and centralised AI enablement layers at scale. You will set the technical direction for the DevOps team, driving and documenting the platform standards, practices and tooling that champion DevEx, ease friction and keep our systems resilient and secure.

This is a hands‑on leadership role. You will architect and solve complex infrastructure challenges while mentoring and growing the engineers around you. You will own our platform SLAs, serve as the platform advocate in cross‑functional decisions, and act as the core authority on resilience, cost, security and enablement.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the end‑to‑end reliability, stability and performance of our production platform.
• Enforce SLAs across availability, security posture and resilience.
• Drive the measures, thresholds and incident response standards the team operates to.
• Run and maintain a multi‑region, zero‑downtime platform.
• Own deployment strategies (blue/green, canary), traffic management and failover patterns that ensure continuous availability under change and failure.
• Own the platform's security posture end to end: networking controls, IAM, KMS, secrets management, vulnerability management and compliance against frameworks such as PCI DSS v4 and CIS Benchmarks.
• Work closely with security teams and act as the DevOps authority on audit and risk.
• Participate in disaster recovery strategy, automation, execution and continuous improvement.
• Drive the strategy on platform total cost of ownership, providing teams with clear cost‑allocation visibility.
• Drive rightsizing, tagging strategy and architectural decisions that balance cost against reliability and developer experience.
• Set and maintain the standards for IaC (Terraform, Terragrunt).
• Ensure deployments are secure, fast and auditable.
• Raise the bar on automation so routine operational tasks are eliminated, not managed.
• Own the observability strategy across the platform using Datadog.
• Define what good looks like: SLO/SLA dashboards, alerting thresholds, runbooks and the feedback loops that let teams act on signals before users feel them.
• Lead and grow a team of DevOps engineers.
• Set technical direction, conduct design reviews and create an environment where engineers take ownership.
• Actively mentor and develop less experienced engineers, helping them move from task execution to platform thinking.
• Lead the team's adoption of AI‑assisted operations, embedding AI into CI/CD pipelines, runbook automation, incident response and developer tooling.
• Define where AI adds real leverage and own its safe integration into the platform.

Knowledge, Skills and Behaviours

Essential

• Deep expertise with AWS at scale: EKS (Automode), Lambda, EC2, RDS/Aurora, multi‑region networking (VPC + Endpoints, Transit Gateway, Network Firewall, WAF, API Gateway), security services (IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, SCPs, Security Hub, GuardDuty) and AI tooling (Bedrock Agentcore).
• Proven ownership of a production‑grade EKS platform with zero‑downtime deployments, with ArgoCD, Istio, blue/green and canary strategies as second nature.
• Terraform expertise, having set the IaC standards for a team, not just followed them.
• Authority on CI/CD pipelines to automate fast, secure and seamless deployments, with a strong emphasis on improving developer experience to automate routine tasks and improve operational efficiency.
• Experience embedding AI into SDLC workflows.
• Hands‑on DR experience: automated backup, multi‑region/AZ failover, AWS FIS testing and formal DR exercises with defined RTO/RPO targets.
• Familiarity with security, having worked within a compliant environment, and comfortable in security audits and risk conversations.
• Comfortable with security tooling such as CrowdStrike and Rapid7, SIEM/SOC.
• Observability ownership with Datadog (or equivalent), having defined SLOs, built the dashboards and set the alerting culture.
• Experience leading or mentoring a DevOps team, with the ability to set direction, manage technical debt conversations and grow engineers.
• Comfortable with Python, Bash, Ansible, Helm and GitHub Actions.

Reward & Benefits: What's in it for me?

We want our people to feel recognised, supported and able to thrive both at work and beyond it.

We offer a competitive reward package designed to support your financial, physical and mental wellbeing, alongside opportunities to learn, develop and be recognised for the contribution you make. Benefits vary by role and location, and full details will be shared as part of the application process.

Equal opportunities: Our commitment to inclusion

Collinson Group is an equal opportunities employer. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, identities and experiences, and believe that different perspectives make our business stronger.