Lead Cloud Engineer

Inspire People; Swansea; Hybrid; GBP 58,000 - 82,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Civil Service pension

25 days annual leave

On-site facilities

On-call allowance up to £4,500

Career progression

Job summary

DVLA is seeking a Lead Cloud Engineer to drive cloud engineering at government-scale. The role requires hands-on AWS expertise and strong IaC and DevOps discipline to design, build, and operate secure, scalable cloud platforms. You will mentor engineers and deliver services across multiple teams.

You will join a mission-driven digital team delivering critical national services with hybrid working arrangements (minimum 60% office attendance) from Swansea.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading cloud engineering teams in enterprise environments.
• Hands-on AWS expertise within large-scale environments.
• Proficiency with IaC tooling and modern DevOps practices.
• Experience delivering secure, scalable cloud platforms.

Responsibilities

• Technically lead Agile Cloud Engineering teams following DevOps principles.
• Design, build and operate secure, scalable cloud platforms (AWS/Azure).
• Own cloud services lifecycle from design to improvement.
• Mentor Cloud Engineers and drive engineering excellence.

Skills

Cloud leadership

AWS

Infrastructure as Code

DevOps tooling

CI/CD

Cloud platforms

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

ArgoCD

Kubernetes

Elastic/Instana

Job description

Lead Cloud Engineer

Swansea Permanent Hybrid Working (minimum 60% office attendance) £57,515 base salary + Digital & Data allowance up to £24,915 (total package up to £82,430) + potential £4,500 on-call allowance

There is a Familiarisation Session for this vacancy on Wednesday 28 October at 12pm.

Become part of a mission-driven digital team helping to build secure, resilient services used by millions across the UK. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), in partnership with Inspire People, is seeking a Lead Cloud Engineer with proven experience leading cloud engineering teams, hands‑on AWS expertise, and strong skills in Infrastructure-as-Code, DevOps tooling, CI/CD pipelines and cloud platform delivery. Based in Swansea on a permanent basis, this role offers hybrid working (minimum 60% office attendance) and a package worth up to £82,430 through DVLA's Digital & Data Capability-Based Pay Framework.

Shape the Future of Digital Services at DVLA

DVLA delivers critical national services that support more than 53 million drivers and vehicles across the UK. As digital transformation continues at scale, Cloud Engineering plays a pivotal role in ensuring services remain secure, resilient, scalable and available to millions of citizens. As a Lead Cloud Engineer, you'll help shape the platforms, infrastructure and engineering practices that underpin some of the UK's most heavily used public services.

As a Lead Cloud Engineer, you will:

• Technically lead Agile Cloud Engineering teams following DevOps principles
• Design, build and operate secure, scalable cloud platforms across AWS and Azure environments
• Own cloud services throughout their full lifecycle, from design and implementation through to support and continuous improvement
• Work closely with Technical Architects to translate architectural designs into operational solutions
• Mentor and develop Cloud Engineers, driving engineering excellence and capability growth

Essential skills for the Lead Cloud Engineer include:

• Experience technically leading engineering teams delivering cloud platform services
• Strong hands‑on AWS experience within enterprise-scale environments
• Proven experience with Infrastructure-as-Code, including Terraform and/or CloudFormation
• Experience building and automating cloud infrastructure using modern DevOps practices

Desirable skills for the Lead Cloud Engineer include:

• Experience working with Azure cloud technologies
• Knowledge of Kubernetes and Amazon EKS
• Experience with GitOps practices and tools such as ArgoCD
• Familiarity with observability and monitoring platforms such as Elastic and Instana

In return, you can expect a flexible working culture, including:

• Hybrid working with a minimum of 60% office-based attendance
• Flexible working arrangements that support work‑life balance
• Civil Service pension with employer contributions of 28.97%
• 25 days annual leave, rising to 30 days with service, plus bank holidays and an additional King's Birthday privilege day
• Access to industry certifications, qualifications and continuous professional development
• Clear career progression within DVLA's Digital & Data profession
• On‑site gym, nursery, restaurants and coffee bar
• Free parking
• Employee Assistance Programme and wellbeing support
• Opportunity to participate in an on‑call rota with an additional allowance of up to £4,500 per annum

Why Join?

This is an opportunity to lead cloud engineering at national scale. You'll work on platforms supporting millions of transactions, influence the future direction of DVLA's cloud strategy, and help build secure, resilient digital services relied upon by citizens and businesses across the UK. Working with modern technologies including AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, Terraform, CloudFormation and GitOps tooling, you'll combine technical leadership with hands‑on engineering while contributing to one of the UK's largest digital transformation programmes.

If you're an experienced cloud engineering leader who thrives on building high‑performing teams, modern cloud platforms and services that make a real difference,