Lead DevOps & Automation Engineer

Sopra Steria; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 55,000 - 75,000; Full time

Job summary

Sopra Steria is seeking a Lead DevOps & Automation Engineer to own DevOps and automation capabilities, lead a team, shape ways of working, and drive innovation across secure, enterprise-scale environments in the UK.

You will leverage Ansible, Terraform and Kubernetes, mentor engineers, and support pre-sales with technical requirements.

Qualifications

• Strong troubleshooting across infrastructure, automation pipelines, and systems integration.
• Proactive in identifying risks, inefficiencies and improvement opportunities.
• End-to-end ownership of automation initiatives from concept to delivery.
• Production experience with Microsoft and Linux in secure, enterprise-scale environments.
• Hands-on with Ansible and Terraform; scripting in PowerShell, Bash, or Python.

Responsibilities

• Lead a transformative team to embed DevOps practices and ways of working.
• Lead a team of DevOps engineers, supporting growth and skills development.
• Design and implement solutions leveraging DevOps and automation across the account.
• Develop services, scripts and configurations for an infrastructure-as-code strategy.
• Provide technical support, mentoring and fault resolution during projects.
• Support pre-sales to understand user problems and define technical requirements.

Skills

Leadership

Troubleshooting

Automation ownership

DevOps practices

End-to-end ownership

Tools

Ansible

Terraform

Kubernetes

Tanzu

GitLab

Job description

We are looking for a Lead DevOps & Automation Engineer to take ownership of all aspects of our DevOps and Automation capabilities. You will lead a team, shape ways of working, and play a key role in driving innovation and continuous improvement. With a strong focus on automation, infrastructure as code and best practice, this role offers the opportunity to work across secure, enterprise‑scale environments while supporting the growth and development of others.

What you’ll be doing:

• Leading a transformative team to build, develop and embed DevOps practices and ways of working.
• Leading a team of DevOps Engineers, supporting their growth and helping build their skills and competencies.
• Designing and implementing solutions that leverage DevOps and automation capabilities across the account.
• Developing services, scripts and or configurations that support an infrastructure as code strategy.
• Providing technical support, mentoring and fault resolution during project phases.
• Support our sales teams in a pre‑sales function to understand user problems and assist with the definition of technical requirements and potential opportunities.

What you’ll bring:

• Strong troubleshooting skills across infrastructure, automation pipelines, and systems integration.
• Proactive approach to identifying risks, inefficiencies, and improvement opportunities.
• Can take end‑to‑end ownership of automation initiatives from concept to delivery.
• Production experience working with primarily Microsoft but also Linux technologies across secure and highly available enterprise scale environments.
• Strong working knowledge and hands‑on experience with automation tools such as Ansible, Terraform etc.
• Competent with multiple scripting languages such as PowerShell, Bash, Python.

It would be great if you had:

• Strong working knowledge of Configuration Management and Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Including supporting tooling such as Ansible and Terraform.
• Experience supporting the design of complex systems and contributing to high quality design documentation.
• Experience building Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. Along with supporting tooling such as GitLab.
• Experience using container technologies like Kubernetes or Tanzu.
• Working knowledge of Network Security and TCP/IP networking.
• On‑Prem, Hybrid and multi‑cloud experience.

If you’re 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!

Employment Type: Full‑time, Permanent.

Location: London, Manchester or Gloucestershire.

Security Clearance Level: eDV.

Internal Recruiter: Rebecca.

Salary: £55,000 - £75,000.

Benefits: £5,400 car allowance, 25 days annual leave with the option to buy additional days, private medical, life assurance, pension, and generous flexible benefits fund.

Although this role is advertised as full‑time, we believe that flexibility at work can promote work/life balance, increase your motivation, reduce stress and improves performance and productivity. We support different ways of working and can offer a range of flexible working arrangements. So, if you’re interested and need to work flexibly, we encourage you to apply and talk to us about what might be possible.

Loved reading about this job and want to know more about us?

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.

We embrace difference as a source of creativity, innovation and competitive advantage and are striving to become a more diverse organisation. We welcome applications from people with a diverse variety of backgrounds and identities. We are committed to equality of opportunity for all and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation or marital status. We have partnered with Vercida, the UK's largest diversity and inclusion focused careers site, where all our vacancies are available in an accessible format.

If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, to enable you to perform to the best of your ability, please let us know when completing your application. We participate in the Disability Confident scheme and are committed to offering an interview to any candidate with a disability, who meets the minimum criteria for the role. If you believe this could apply to you, please let us know when completing your application.