DevOps Engineer

Alliants; Southampton; Hybrid; GBP 57,000 - 62,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working

Job summary

Alliants, based in Southampton, seeks a hands-on DevOps Engineer to build guardrails for AI-generated code in production. You will own AWS infrastructure, define IaC with OpenTofu/Terraform, and ensure 99.9%+ availability and security.

You will work on a product engineering team with a focus on policy-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, and incident response, in a hybrid role with flexible in-office days.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience managing AWS environments (ECS, RDS, VPC, S3, API Gateway, Lambda, CloudFront, IAM).
• Infrastructure-as-Code with Terraform or OpenTofu and module patterns.
• Containerisation with Docker and secure runtime configurations.
• Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines with automated testing and rollback.
• Strong scripting/programming ability (Linux, Bash, Git, Python/TypeScript/JavaScript).

Responsibilities

• Implement guardrails and policy-as-code for safe AI-generated code deployment.
• Build automated quality control layer for static analysis, schema checks, and dependency scanning.
• Deploy and optimise AWS infrastructure defined as code (OpenTofu/Terraform).
• Create fast, self-verifying CI/CD pipelines with automatic rollback to last known-good.
• Respond to incidents with root-cause analysis and automated prevention measures.

Skills

AWS proficiency

CI/CD automation

Scripting and programming

InfoSec best practices

AI coding agents usage

Tools

OpenTofu/Terraform

Docker

OpenTofu

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Job Description

All of our engineering is AI-assisted by default — and we're looking for a DevOps Engineer to build the guardrails that decide what AI-generated code is allowed to do in production.

The role at a glance

• Title: DevOps Engineer
• Location: Southampton, UK — hybrid, minimum three days per week in the office, up to two days remote
• Compensation: £57,000 – £62,000 per year
• Contract: Full-time, permanent — 40 hours per week
• Team: Product Engineering — DevOps. Five engineers including this role, reporting to the Senior DevOps Architect

This is a hands-on DevOps role on our Product Engineering team, and it's built around two things.

First - Alliants engineering is AI-assisted by default, and the function is shifting from doing the work directly to building the controls that let the wider organisation ship safely. You'll build and maintain the automated validation, testing, standards enforcement and risk detection that stand between generated code and production. Your work decides what everyone else can safely build.

Second - Ownership. You'll deploy, maintain and optimise the AWS infrastructure behind our proprietary products and client solutions and hold it to 99.9%+ availability, security compliance, and no single points of failure from network through to database.

Role Focus & Operating Context

All code in this role is produced with AI coding agents. A thorough understanding of infrastructure-as-code and automation is essential. The skill we hire for is directing, constraining, reviewing and verifying output to a high standard.

Standards, architectural decisions and runbooks are treated as machine-readable inputs to agents, not just documents for humans. They have to stay accurate and enforceable as the volume of change keeps rising: every control must scale without a human in the loop for the routine case, while reliably stopping the dangerous one.

You'll work across proprietary products and client hosting environments, under real SLA and support commitments, alongside four other DevOps engineers and the software engineering teams who consume what you build.

What You'll Work On And Own

• The guardrails — policy-as-code, protected environments, scoped IAM, blast-radius limits and promotion paths that make the dangerous change impossible rather than discouraged
• The automated quality layer — static analysis, schema and migration safety checks, dependency and licence scanning, automated code review and integration testing
• The infrastructure — AWS environments defined in OpenTofu/Terraform, for Alliants products and for clients
• The pipelines — fast, parallel, self-verifying CI/CD with automatic failure detection and rollback to last known-good
• The environments assigned to you — availability, security posture, cost, and what happens at 3am when something breaks
• The templates and standards that make the safe route the easiest route for everyone else

Job Requirements

What you'll bring

• Hands-on experience managing and configuring AWS environments — ECS (Fargate), RDS, VPC, S3, API Gateway, Lambda, CloudFront, IAM
• Hands-on Infrastructure-as-Code experience with Terraform or OpenTofu, including established module patterns, state management, and safe handling of destructive changes
• Containerisation experience with Docker, including image optimisation and secure runtime configuration
• Demonstrated experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation, including automated testing and rollback
• Strong command-line, scripting and programming ability — Linux, Bash, Git, plus Python, TypeScript or JavaScript — for diagnostics and automation
• Solid grounding in information security best practice, secrets management, system documentation, and operating resilient systems with no single points of failure
• Commercial experience supporting multiple environments under SLA and support commitments
• Practical, current experience using AI coding agents (Claude Code or equivalent) as the primary means of producing code, and the judgement to verify their output rather than trust it

To thrive in this role, you'll be someone who:

• Asks \"how do I make this impossible to get wrong\" rather than \"how do I fix this instance\"
• Takes proactive initiative on environment health and automation without waiting for direction
• Gets satisfaction from other people shipping safely at speed, and builds controls that unblock rather than obstruct
• Uses AI aggressively while assuming its output is wrong until verified, and encodes that assumption into the checks
• Explains technical issues clearly to non-technical colleagues and, where needed, client contacts
• Stays analytical during high-severity production incidents

Job Responsibilities

• Implement and maintain the guardrails — designed with the Senior DevOps Architect — that let engineers and non-engineers safely ship AI-generated application and infrastructure code: policy-as-code, protected environments, scoped IAM and blast-radius limits, mandatory automated gates, plan review, drift detection, and clear sandbox-to-production promotion paths.
• Build out and maintain the automated quality control layer to agreed standards, covering static analysis, schema and migration safety checks, dependency and licence scanning, automated code review and integration testing, so unsafe or substandard changes are caught by the system rather than by a person.
• Deploy, maintain and optimise cloud infrastructure, primarily AWS, for Alliants products and clients — delivering 99.9%+ availability, security compliance, and no single points of failure from network through to database. All infrastructure is defined as code in OpenTofu/Terraform.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines that are fast, parallel and self-verifying, with automatic detection of failed deployments and rollback to the last known-good version, reducing release cycle time while driving deployment-related incidents towards zero.
• Implement instrumentation, alerting, dashboards and performance reporting to identify bottlenecks and regressions before they become incidents.
• Apply InfoSec and regulatory standards, including WAF coverage, centrally managed secrets and least-privilege access.
• Manage, troubleshoot and resolve service desk escalations and production incidents, with root-cause analysis and automated prevention of recurrence rather than repeat manual fixes.
• Contribute to cloud cost optimisation, and provide the usage data behind accurate reporting.
• Support internal and client technical teams with hosting and environment queries, communicating performance and incident reports clearly.
• Maintain the templates and standards that make the safe route the easiest route for everyone else.
• Take part in the out-of-hours on-call rota as first responder, currently one week in six.

Job Benefits

Who is Alliants and what do we do?

Alliants, established in 2009, is dedicated to producing customer engagement technologies and services that pave the way for a more human, sustainable, and promising future for hospitality.

At Alliants, we are all in for our people and our industry.

What's in it for you?

• Hybrid working: a minimum of three days a week together in the Southampton office, with the rest of the week worked flexibly and support for flexible working
• AI-native engineering, for real: a genuine mandate to build the systems that let a whole organisation ship safely with AI, not a pilot bolted onto business as usual
• Real ownership: the environments and pipelines assigned to you are yours, with minimal micromanagement and direct impact on day-to-day delivery
• Room to grow: a clear technical path alongside a Senior DevOps Architect who sets the architecture and expects you to run it
• Inclusive team culture: we strive to create an environment where everyone can do their best work
• A warm welcome: to celebrate you joining Alliants, we'll plant a Great Oak tree in your honour

Please note: this role is hybrid and requires you to be within commuting distance of our Southampton office.

Alliants celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Salary

57000 - 62000 GBP (yearly)