Senior Azure DevOps Engineer

Socium; Manchester; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

Socium in Manchester is seeking an experienced Azure DevOps Platform Lead to own the platform and standardise delivery across engineering teams. You’ll design reusable YAML pipelines, branch policies and deployment guardrails to streamline software releases.

You will migrate Jira and Confluence into Azure DevOps, consolidating pipelines, boards, backlogs, and documentation, while mentoring engineers and driving platform health improvements.

Qualifications

• Deep hands-on experience with Azure DevOps and YAML pipelines.
• Experience building reusable, template-based pipelines for multiple teams.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD, branching strategies and release management.
• Experience designing branch policies, PR gates and environment approval processes.
• Working knowledge of Azure Key Vault, Entra ID and managed identities.
• Experience managing service connections, secrets and secure deployment processes.
• Evidence of designing or significantly improving an Azure DevOps platform.
• Experience helping development teams move towards self-service deployments.

Responsibilities

• Own the Azure DevOps platform across engineering, building reusable YAML pipeline templates.
• Create consistent branching strategies, branch policies and PR controls.
• Introduce approval gates, security checks and deployment guardrails.
• Standardise CI/CD processes across dev, test and production.
• Manage service connections, managed identities and secrets securely.
• Integrate tools like Key Vault, Entra ID and SAST into delivery processes.
• Migrate Jira boards, backlogs and ticket history into Azure DevOps Boards.
• Move Confluence docs into Azure DevOps Wiki and maintain traceability.
• Mentor engineers and help teams adopt new standards.
• Own platform health and continuously improve deployment processes.

Skills

Azure DevOps

YAML pipelines

CI/CD

Branching strategies

PR gates

Environment approvals

Platform design

Self-service deployments

Key Vault

Entra ID

Managed identities

Service connections

Migration planning

Tools

Azure DevOps

Jira

Confluence

Job description

Multiple development teams. Different branching strategies, different release processes and too much engineering time spent troubleshooting delivery issues.

You’ll come in to change that.

You’ll own the Azure DevOps platform across the engineering function, building the reusable pipelines, controls and standards development teams use to release software themselves.

Alongside that, you’ll lead the migration of Jira and Confluence into Azure DevOps, creating one place for pipelines, boards, backlogs and documentation.

What you’ll own

• Designing and building reusable Azure DevOps YAML pipeline templates
• Creating consistent branching strategies, branch policies and pull request controls
• Introducing approval gates, security checks and deployment guardrails
• Standardising CI/CD processes across development, test and production
• Managing service connections, managed identities and secrets securely
• Integrating tools such as Key Vault, Entra ID and SAST scanning into the delivery process
• Migrating Jira boards, backlogs and ticket history into Azure DevOps Boards
• Moving Confluence documentation into Azure DevOps Wiki
• Maintaining history, field mappings and traceability throughout the migration
• Mentoring engineers and helping teams adopt the new standards
• Owning platform health and continuously improving the deployment process

What we need

• Deep hands‑on experience with Azure DevOps and YAML pipelines
• Experience building reusable, template‑based pipelines for multiple engineering teams
• Strong understanding of CI/CD, branching strategies and release management
• Experience designing branch policies, PR gates and environment approval processes
• Working knowledge of Azure Key Vault, Entra ID and managed identities
• Experience managing service connections, secrets and secure deployment processes
• Evidence of designing or significantly improving an Azure DevOps platform
• Experience helping development teams move towards self‑service deployments
• The confidence to define standards and influence how engineering teams work
• Strong ownership from initial assessment and design through to implementation

Experience with Jira or Confluence migrations would stand out, particularly where you’ve preserved boards, backlogs, ticket history or documentation.

The focus is firmly on Azure DevOps. You’ll be building the platform, consolidating the tooling and giving engineering teams a consistent, secure way to ship software.

You’ll be the person setting the direction, building the foundations and making delivery easier for every engineering team.