Lead DevOps Architect

Stott and May; City Of London; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A technology consulting firm is seeking an experienced DevOps Lead / Architect to design scalable observability and cloud infrastructure. The role involves building monitoring systems, promoting GitOps practices, and providing technical mentorship. The ideal candidate will have strong AWS skills and experience with Terraform, CI/CD tools, and container orchestration. This position is office-based in London with a focus on high-availability solutions.

Responsibilities

• Architect and maintain observability platforms using Datadog and Geneos.
• Design and manage scalable cloud infrastructure using Terraform.
• Implement GitOps workflows with GitLab for CI/CD.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to ensure software reliability.
• Optimise alerting and monitoring strategies.
• Mentor junior engineers on SRE best practices.
• Lead incident response and drive continuous improvement.
• Oversee cloud cost management for observability infrastructure.

Skills

AWS services (EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, VPC, IAM, CloudWatch, EKS, ECS)

Infrastructure as Code using Terraform

CI/CD tools (GitLab CI, Jenkins)

Monitoring and alerting (Datadog, Geneos)

GitOps workflows

Scripting and automation (Python, Bash)

Linux systems and networking

Containerisation and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)

Problem-solving and collaboration

Job description

Job Title: DevOps Lead / Architect
Location: London – Office based (minimum 3 days per week)
Day Rate: Market rate (Inside IR35)
Contract Duration: 6 months

Role Summary

We are looking for an experienced DevOps Lead / Architect to design, implement, and maintain scalable observability and cloud infrastructure. The successful candidate will embed reliability, performance, and automation into our systems, champion GitOps practices, and provide technical leadership to deliver robust, high-availability solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect and maintain observability platforms using Datadog and Geneos for comprehensive monitoring and alerting.

• Design and manage scalable cloud infrastructure using Terraform and IaC principles.

• Implement and promote GitOps workflows with GitLab for CI/CD and deployment automation.

• Collaborate with engineering teams to ensure reliability, scalability, and performance in software delivery.

• Optimise alerting and monitoring strategies to improve actionable insights.

• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to SRE best practices.

• Lead incident response, perform root cause analysis, and drive continuous improvement.

• Oversee cloud cost management for observability infrastructure in line with Cloud FinOps principles.

Essential Skills / Knowledge / Experience

• Strong hands-on experience with AWS services (EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, VPC, IAM, CloudWatch, EKS, ECS).

• Expertise in Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.

• Experience with CI/CD tools such as GitLab CI and Jenkins for Java and Python microservices architectures.

• Advanced knowledge of Datadog and Geneos for monitoring and alerting.

• Proficiency with GitLab and GitOps workflows.

• Strong scripting and automation skills (Python, Bash).

• Solid understanding of Linux systems, networking, and distributed systems.

• Experience with containerisation and orchestration using Docker and Kubernetes.

• Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to work collaboratively.

Desirable Skills / Knowledge / Experience

• AWS certifications (Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer, or equivalent).

• Familiarity with SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets.

• Experience with multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environments.

• Knowledge of ITIL or SRE frameworks and methodologies.

• Experience in regulated or high-availability environments (fintech, financial services, or capital markets).