Lead DevOps Engineer - SC Cleared

ShareForce Ltd; North East; Hybrid; GBP 91,000 - 119,000; Full time

Job summary

ShareForce Ltd invites an experienced Lead DevOps Engineer to join a high-profile programme in Newcastle, shaping the first digital solution of its kind.

You will provide technical leadership to a six-strong DevOps team, set engineering direction and stay hands-on when required, ensuring secure, scalable cloud infrastructure and robust CI/CD pipelines across internal and partner delivery teams.

Qualifications

• Strong experience leading DevOps teams within large, complex technology programmes.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction and engineering standards for the DevOps team.

Skills

Leadership

Multi-vendor delivery

AWS (IAM/S3/EC2/Lambda/VPC/DynamoDB)

Terraform

GitHub Actions

Bash scripting

CI/CD

Cloud security

Technical leadership

Stakeholder management

Tools

Terraform

GitHub Actions

Kubernetes

Job description

Lead DevOps Engineer

Up to £570 per day | Outside IR35 | Newcastle | Hybrid Remote | Active SC Required

• Location: Newcastle / Hybrid Remote - typically 2-3 days onsite per month
• Rate: Up to £570 per day
• IR35: Outside
• Duration: Initial 6 months
• Start Date: End of November
• Active SC Clearance Required

Role Overview

We are hiring an experienced Lead DevOps Engineer to join a high-profile programme designing and building the first digital solution of its kind.

You will provide technical leadership to an established DevOps team, setting technical direction and improving engineering practices while remaining hands-on when required. The team currently comprises six DevOps Engineers working across internal and third-party delivery partners.

This is a key role within a large, complex, multi-vendor programme and would suit someone who can combine strong AWS and DevOps expertise with pragmatic technical leadership. You will help create an effective, autonomous engineering environment, improve ways of working and provide support and direction to the wider team.

Key Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction and engineering standards for the DevOps team.
• Lead, support and mentor a team of DevOps Engineers.
• Remain hands-on with technical delivery, troubleshooting and engineering tasks when required.
• Drive improvements to DevOps practices, processes and ways of working.
• Promote team autonomy, effective collaboration and sustainable engineering practices.
• Work closely with internal and third-party engineers, Delivery Managers and technical stakeholders.
• Support the team in removing technical blockers and resolving complex issues.
• Ensure cloud infrastructure and deployment approaches are secure, scalable and maintainable.
• Provide technical leadership across a complex, multi-vendor delivery environment.
• Help establish clear ownership, responsibilities and effective working relationships across delivery partners.

Skills & Experience

• Strong experience leading DevOps teams within large, complex technology programmes.
• Proven experience working within multi-vendor delivery environments.
• Strong hands-on AWS experience, including IAM, S3, EC2, Lambda, VPCs and DynamoDB.
• Strong Infrastructure as Code experience using Terraform.
• Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions.
• Strong Bash scripting skills.
• Good understanding of cloud and infrastructure security.
• Ability to set technical direction while remaining comfortable working hands-on.
• Experience improving engineering practices and ways of working within established teams.
• Strong communication, collaboration and stakeholder-management skills.
• A pragmatic leadership style with the ability to support and empower technical teams.

Desirable

• Platform Engineering experience.
• Databricks.
• Kubernetes.
• GitHub Administration.
• AWS API Gateway.
• AWS Workspaces.
• AWS OpenSearch.