Lead DevOps Engineer

Inara; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

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Holiday allowance

Health insurance

Pension

MacBook Pro

Job summary

Inara Talent is partnering with a high-growth compliance technology business in Manchester seeking a Lead DevOps Engineer. You will set the technical direction for platform engineering and be the go-to authority for DevOps, embedding into multiple teams and mentoring engineers while not managing people directly.

The role focuses on reliability, Terraform-based infrastructure as code, and advanced CI/CD workflows, with hybrid UK work arrangement and attractive salary.

Qualifications

• Deep AWS expertise and platform engineering leadership.
• Ability to coach engineers without direct reports.
• Strong communication with senior stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Act as technical authority for DevOps and platform engineering across the business.
• Embed into multiple teams to lead complex infrastructure projects.
• Coach engineers to raise the technical bar without formal line management.
• Own production platform reliability including monitoring, observability and incident response.
• Shape CI/CD workflows and infrastructure as code practices across the org.
• Represent DevOps in wider technical discussions and guide strategic direction.

Skills

AWS expertise

Technical leadership

Coaching engineers

Communication skills

Tools

Terraform

GitHub Actions

SRE tooling

Job description

Industry: Compliance Technology / RegTech / FinTech SaaS

Location: Manchester (Hybrid, 1-2 days a week in the office)

Salary: £90,000 - £110,000 (maybe some wiggle room for the right person)

Are you a DevOps expert looking for a role where you can lead through technical craft rather than headcount? We're working with a fast-scaling compliance technology business on the hunt for a Lead DevOps Engineer to set the technical direction for how their platform is built, run and scaled.

About the Company

Our client sits at the centre of how the world's biggest regulated financial firms manage risk. Their platform captures and supervises digital communications across email, MS Teams, WhatsApp, iMessage and more, giving compliance teams the confidence to say yes to new channels and new ways of working, without losing sight of what matters.

Following a recent merger, the business now brings together content compliance, distribution and communications supervision into a single, connected platform, governing the entire regulated communication lifecycle end to end. The combined business works with 17 of the top 20 global asset managers and supports more than 1,550 regulated firms worldwide, with AI at the heart of how it surfaces risk and cuts down manual review time.

Backed by significant investment and growing fast, particularly across the US, this is a pivotal moment for the engineering team, and a genuinely exciting time to join.

The Role

This is a technical leadership role, not a people management one. You won't be managing direct reports; instead, you'll be the go-to technical authority for DevOps and platform engineering across the business; setting standards, raising the bar, and getting stuck in alongside the teams that need you most.

You'll work closely with the Head of Platform, taking a senior project lead position on the most complex and highest-impact pieces of infrastructure work. You'll embed into multiple engineering teams as needed, coaching and mentoring the engineers around you, without owning their appraisals or career progression.

Think: senior technical mentor and escalation point, not line manager.

What You'll Do

• Act as the technical authority for DevOps and platform engineering practice across the business
• Embed into multiple teams on a project basis, leading complex infrastructure and reliability initiatives from a technical standpoint
• Coach and mentor engineers across SRE and platform-embedded (SIP-style) functions, raising the technical bar without formal line management
• Own production platform reliability: monitoring, observability and incident response using tools like Grafana, Sentry, Prometheus, CloudWatch and PagerDuty
• Drive best practice across AWS: Lambda, ECS Fargate, SQS, SNS, Aurora (PostgreSQL & MySQL), and S3
• Set the standard for Infrastructure as Code using Terraform
• Shape CI/CD workflows using GitHub Actions, including secrets management and developer experience improvements
• Support capacity planning, load testing and security hardening across the platform
• Represent DevOps and platform engineering in wider technical discussions, providing recommendations that shape strategic direction
• Manage critical, cross-team projects with minimal oversight

What You'll Bring

• Deep, hands-on expertise across AWS and modern DevOps practice, with the credibility to lead technically without a management title
• Proven experience with Terraform and Infrastructure as Code at scale
• Experience with GitHub Actions or equivalent CI/CD tooling
• A track record of coaching and influencing engineers without direct authority over them
• Comfort operating as a subject matter expert across multiple teams and systems simultaneously
• Excellent communication skills, with the confidence to represent technical thinking in front of senior stakeholders
• Previous experience in a lead or principal DevOps/SRE role is essential; previous people management experience is not required

Why Join

• A genuine technical leadership role, shaping direction without the overhead of formal management
• Work at the centre of a newly combined platform serving some of the biggest names in global financial services
• Backed by significant investment and scaling fast, particularly in the US
• Flexible hybrid working from Manchester, with the option to work from anywhere in the UK
• The chance to build best practice from the ground up across a growing, ambitious engineering function

The package

• £90,000 - £110,000 (some wiggle room for the right person)
• Share options
• 25 days holiday + bank holidays + your birthday off
• Vitality health insurance + cash plan
• Enhanced pension + life insurance (4x salary)
• Latest MacBook Pro + equipment budget
• Flexible hybrid working from Manchester, 2-4 office days a month, open to candidates from across the UK

At Inara Talent, we believe everyone deserves a fair chance to shine. We connect great people from all backgrounds with opportunities where they can thrive making sure hiring is fair, inclusive, and genuinely diverse. No matter your background, we focus on what matters: your talent.