DevSecOps Architect (Director level)

Nicoll Curtin; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Nicoll Curtin is seeking a senior DevSecOps Architect to define and drive the target-state architecture for how software is built, tested, secured and released across the engineering estate.

This is a senior transformation role with an immediate focus on test automation, alongside CI/CD standardisation, security automation, developer productivity and the adoption of AI-assisted software engineering.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience architecting CI/CD, DevSecOps and engineering platforms at scale.
• Proven track record delivering test automation strategies improving quality and release speed.
• Credible across development, architecture and platform teams in regulated environments.
• Strong knowledge of modern testing tooling and security controls in pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Define the target-state CI/CD and DevSecOps architecture for builds, releases and rollbacks.
• Converge tooling onto a common platform and modernise legacy pipelines.
• Own the test automation strategy across unit to end-to-end testing.
• Define test data management, automation coverage and quality gates.
• Embed security controls (SAST/DAST/SCA) and SBOM into pipelines.
• Establish policy-as-code and software supply chain security across delivery.
• Define AI-assisted software engineering architecture and governance for production AI/ML systems.

Skills

CI/CD

DevSecOps

Architecture

Test Automation

SAST

DAST

SCA

Kubernetes

Terraform

Selenium

Playwright

Jenkins

GitHub Actions

AI/ML

Tools

Selenium

Playwright

Cypress

JUnit

pytest

Pact

JMeter

k6

Job description

A leading financial services organisation is looking for a senior DevSecOps Architect to define and drive the target-state architecture for how software is built, tested, secured and released across its engineering estate.

This is a senior transformation role with an immediate focus on test automation, alongside CI/CD standardisation, security automation, developer productivity and the adoption of AI-assisted software engineering.

Key Responsibilities

• Define the target-state CI/CD and DevSecOps architecture, covering build standards, branching, artefact management, environment promotion, deployment, release and rollback.
• Drive convergence of fragmented engineering toolchains onto a common paved-road engineering platform, with a clear approach for modernising legacy pipelines.
• Own the test automation strategy across unit, integration, contract, end-to-end, performance and resilience testing.
• Define test data management, automation coverage and quality gates, embedding automated testing directly into release decisions.
• Drive shift-left testing, service virtualisation and greater automation across complex engineering environments.
• Embed automated security controls including SAST, DAST, SCA, container/IaC scanning, secrets detection and SBOM generation into delivery pipelines.
• Establish policy-as-code, software supply chain security and automated compliance evidence, reducing manual controls and improving auditability.
• Define architecture and guardrails for AI-assisted software engineering, including coding assistants, agentic development, automated code review and AI-generated testing.
• Help establish the lifecycle and control framework for production AI/ML and LLM systems, including evaluation, deployment, monitoring, governance and rollback.

Experience

• Significant experience architecting CI/CD, DevSecOps and engineering platforms at enterprise scale within a regulated environment.
• Proven delivery of a test automation strategy that has materially improved software quality, release frequency or defect escape rates.
• Strong software engineering background with credibility across development, architecture and platform engineering teams.
• Strong knowledge of modern testing approaches and tooling such as Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, JUnit/pytest, Pact, JMeter or k6.
• Deep practical experience integrating security controls into CI/CD, including SAST/DAST/SCA, secrets management and software supply chain security.
• Strong experience across Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, GitLab and/or Jenkins, alongside Kubernetes, containers and Terraform.
• Experience modernising complex or legacy engineering estates and driving adoption of common engineering standards.
• Hands-on exposure to AI/ML, LLM systems or AI-assisted engineering would be highly relevant.
• Strong senior stakeholder management with the ability to influence engineering direction and drive adoption across multiple technology teams.