Lead Automation Engineer

Sopra Steria Limited; Rushmoor; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology services company is seeking an Automation Lead for its Aerospace Defence and Security Sector. This role involves designing an automation strategy while ensuring system performance, resilience, and security. Ideal candidates will possess strong Windows and Linux sysadmin skills, proficiency in programming languages, and familiarity with CI/CD pipelines. SC clearance is essential, with eligibility for Developed Vetting (DV).

Benefits

Referral Bonus: £1500.00

Qualifications

• Active SC clearance or above, eligible for Developed Vetting (DV).
• Experience in a highly secure environment.
• Comfortable with configuration management processes.

Responsibilities

• Create and maintain an Automation Strategy.
• Collaborate with a cross-functional team for operational support.
• Develop workflows and tooling to automate processes.
• Provision and optimize infrastructure.
• Maintain observability of the platform.

Skills

Windows sysadmin expertise

Linux sysadmin expertise

JavaScript

Python

C#

C++

Go

Java

PowerShell

Bash

SQL

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)

Terraform

Ansible

CI/CD pipelines

GitLab

Networking

Database administration

Job description

Can you lead on Automation and influence technology decisions? We want you to join our team within the Aerospace Defence and Security Sector and combine software engineering and operations expertise, design an automation strategy, automate tasks, observe system health and optimise infrastructure. Can you be responsible for ensuring our systems are performant, resilient, scalable, and secure? This is an opportunity to work on a very large project within Defence. You should ideally already hold active SC clearance or above. The position will ultimately require you to hold Developed Vetting (DV), so you must be eligible, Based on site on Farnborough.

What you'll be doing:

• Create and maintain an Automation Strategy across a highly secure environment.
• Collaborating as part of a cross-functional team to provide operational and engineering support for a large-scale secure cloud service.
• Domain orchestration. Developing workflows and tooling to automate processes and operations.
• Provisioning, managing and optimising infrastructure.
• Produce component designs and specifications of any size and complexity.
• Maintaining observability of the platform.
• Change management and capacity planning.
• Ensure that appropriate software configuration management processes are implemented.

What you'll bring:

• Strong Windows and Linux sysadmin expertise.
• Proficient with one or more high level programming languages, JavaScript, Python, C#, C++, Go or Java.
• Competent with multiple scripting languages such as PowerShell, Bash or SQL.
• Background working with the core VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) stack. Including vSphere, vSAN, NSX and the Aria Automation suite.
• Familiarity with Configuration Management and Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Including supporting tooling such as Terraform and Ansible.
• Experience building Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines and supporting tooling such as GitLab.
• Knowledge of system interoperability and application interfaces. E.g. RESTful, API, Swagger.
• Networking and database administration know-how.

If you are interested in this role but not sure if your skills and experience are exactly what we're looking for, please do apply, we'd love to hear from you! Referral Bonus: £1500.00 Clearance: Eligible for SC and DV.

About Sopra Steria’s Aerospace, Defence and Security business

Sopra Steria’s Aerospace, Defence and Security business designs, develops and deploys digital solutions to Central Government clients. The work we do makes a real difference to the client's goal of National Security, and we operate in a unique and privileged environment. We are given time for professional development activities, and we coach and mentor our colleagues, sharing knowledge and learning from each other. We foster a culture in which employees feel valued and supported and have pride in their work for the customer, delivering outstanding rates of customer satisfaction in the UK's most complex safety‑and‑security‑critical markets.