Contract Senior DevOps Engineer / SRE

YLD.io; London; Remote; Confidential; Full time

Job summary

A leading consultancy is seeking a Senior DevOps Consultant to empower clients in transforming their delivery capabilities. This role involves hands-on execution of DevOps practices and providing strategic guidance to enhance engineering practices. The ideal candidate will have a deep understanding of DevOps principles, cloud infrastructure, and exceptional consultative skills.

Benefits

Flexible working hours

Opportunity to grow skills in a fast-moving business

Qualifications

• Deep understanding of DevOps principles and tooling.
• Strong expertise in AWS services and architecture patterns.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform.

Responsibilities

• Transform clients' delivery capabilities and improve observability practices.
• Establish clear ownership boundaries and implement effective DevOps culture.
• Mentor and up-skill teams on DevOps practices and tools.

Skills

DevOps principles

Cloud infrastructure

Observability platforms

CI/CD pipelines

Infrastructure as Code

Containerisation technologies

Security best practices

Automated testing strategies

Incident management processes

Job description

Location: Remote EU

Department: Engineering

Employment: Contract (B2B)

About YLD:

Everything we do is to empower our clients to move forward. Our purpose is to help our clients develop the capabilities they need to outperform their competitors. Our success is a consequence of ensuring our clients are successful. Our company is built on extraordinary people; we aim to attract, inspire, develop and retain them. YLD is a software engineering and design consultancy; we create digital capabilities for our clients that last beyond our engagement. We have offices in London, Lisbon, Porto.

Tasks

About the role:

As a Senior DevOps Consultant, you will be a thought leader and change agent, helping our clients transform their delivery capabilities. You'll work directly with development teams while also advising at the organisational level to establish clear ownership boundaries, improve observability practices, and implement an effective DevOps culture. This role requires someone who can both execute hands-on DevOps practices and provide strategic guidance to help clients overcome delivery challenges and establish sustainable engineering practices.

Requirements

Technical competencies:

• Deep understanding of DevOps principles, practices, and tooling with proven experience implementing them in complex organisations
• Clear comprehension of the nuances between SRE, Platform Engineering, and Production Engineering roles and responsibilities
• Strong expertise in cloud infrastructure, particularly AWS services and architecture patterns
• Proficiency with observability platforms, especially DataDog, including dashboard creation, alert configuration, and SLO implementation
• Experience establishing and measuring key reliability metrics (SLOs, MTTR, MTTI, Error Budgets)
• Knowledge of modern CI/CD pipelines and deployment strategies (Blue/Green, Canary, etc.)
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools (Terraform, CloudFormation, CDK)
• Familiarity with containerisation technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) and container orchestration
• Understanding of security best practices and compliance requirements in cloud environments
• Experience implementing automated testing strategies for infrastructure and deployment pipelines
• Knowledge of incident management processes and tools, including post-mortem practices

Non-Technical competencies:

• Exceptional consultative skills with the ability to influence and drive organisational change
• Strong analytical thinking with the ability to assess complex organisational structures and recommend improvements
• Excellent communication skills, able to translate technical concepts to various stakeholders from developers to C-level executives
• Ability to identify ownership gaps and help establish clear responsibilities across teams
• Collaborative approach to problem-solving, working effectively with cross-functional teams
• Self-motivated with the ability to work independently while also integrating with client teams
• Proven ability to build trust and credibility with technical and business stakeholders
• Experience mentoring and up-skilling teams on DevOps practices and tools

Benefits

What you’ll get in return:

• The chance to work with a forward-thinking, ethical, and fun group of people and to develop and grow your skills in a fast-moving business

Our typical Recruitment Process looks like this:

• 1st Interview with someone from the Talent team (30/45 mins)
• Technical Interview with our Senior Developers (1h30)
• Meet and discuss with a Client Partner (15/30mins)

We live and breathe our values, and know you will too:

• Growing every day
• Including everyone
• Relationships built on honesty and ethics
• Inspiring solutions
• Winning together

We’re an equal-opportunity employer and value diversity of all kinds. We don’t discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, pregnancy or maternity, age, marital status, or disability status. We also believe in work-life balance and offer flexible working around our core hours.