Senior DevOps Engineer

MarkIT Placements; Chilton; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private healthcare

pension with employer contribution

Flexible hybrid working

Job summary

MarkIT Placements is seeking a senior, hands-on DevOps engineer to own multi-account AWS environments and platform infrastructure.

You will lead Kubernetes operations (EKS/OpenShift), implement GitOps with GitHub Actions and Argo CD, and drive secure, resilient deployments in a small engineering team in the UK.

Qualifications

• Must have proven DevOps/SRE/Cloud Engineering background with AWS hands-on.
• Experience administering AWS services (EC2, VPC, IAM, S3, ALB/ELB).
• Strong Kubernetes, including EKS/OpenShift, and Helm deployments.
• Experience with Terraform, CloudFormation and CI/CD tooling.
• Security-focused with SSO, IAM, GuardDuty and CloudWatch knowledge.
• Eligible for UK security clearance; UK passport holder; 5+ years residency.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain multi-account, multi-region AWS environments.
• Manage Terraform, Helm and CloudFormation to deploy infra.
• Ensure scalable, secure, highly available cloud-native infrastructure.
• Administer and optimise Kubernetes (EKS/OpenShift).
• Develop robust CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions and Argo CD.
• Integrate SAST/DAST and secure software supply chains.
• Lead cloud security reviews and cost optimisation efforts.
• Maintain observability with Prometheus and CloudWatch.

Skills

AWS experience

Kubernetes administration

Terraform

CI/CD

Linux administration

Security best practices

SRE/DevOps mindset

Communication

Automation scripting

MLOps awareness

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related

UK residency 5+ years

Tools

OpenShift

GitHub Actions

Argo CD

Nexus

CloudFormation

Prometheus

Karpenter

Docker

Terraform Cloud

CloudWatch

Job description

Salary: £100,000 - 100,000 per year

Requirements

• Proven professional experience in DevOps, SRE or Cloud Engineering, with recent hands-on AWS experience.
• Expert knowledge of core AWS services including EC2, VPC, IAM, S3, ALB/ELB, CloudFront, ECR/ECS and Control Tower.
• Strong experience with AWS security tooling, including GuardDuty, IAM Identity Center and CloudWatch.
• Significant experience administering Kubernetes, particularly EKS and/or OpenShift.
• Strong knowledge of Helm and Kubernetes application deployment.
• Experience building and administering on-premises Kubernetes environments.
• Experience with Nexus or comparable enterprise artifact repositories.
• Strong Infrastructure as Code experience with Terraform, Terraform Cloud and/or CloudFormation.
• Strong containerisation experience using Docker and Docker Compose.
• Excellent Linux systems administration skills.
• Strong CI/CD experience with GitHub Actions and Argo CD.
• Experience implementing SAST and DAST within software delivery pipelines.
• Strong scripting and automation skills using Bash, Python and/or Go.
• Experience delivering secure, highly available and cost-efficient cloud platforms.
• Experience implementing SSO across enterprise and industry-standard software platforms.
• A strong understanding of infrastructure security, reliability and operational best practice.
• Applicants must be eligible to obtain UK security clearance.
• Hold a UK passport.
• Have 5 years of continuous UK residency.
• Be eligible for BPSS and SC clearance.
• Active, transferable SC clearance is particularly attractive; DV clearance is an additional advantage.
• Experience with MLOps or LLMOps, SageMaker, Kubeflow or ZenML would be advantageous.
• Extensive on-premises Kubernetes deployment experience would be advantageous.
• Experience with Prometheus or comparable observability platforms would be advantageous.
• Experience with AWS Karpenter or AWS Compute Optimizer would be advantageous.
• Experience operating highly distributed systems would be advantageous.
• Familiarity with ISO 27001, NIST SSDF, OWASP SAMM or similar security frameworks would be advantageous.
• Understanding of GDPR fundamentals would be advantageous.
• Experience working within defence, national security, critical infrastructure or other regulated environments would be advantageous.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work collaboratively in a small engineering team.
• Ability to work independently, take ownership and support or mentor other engineers.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain multi-account, multi-region AWS environments.
• Build and manage infrastructure using Terraform, Terraform Cloud, Helm and CloudFormation.
• Design scalable, secure and highly available cloud-native infrastructure.
• Manage container registries and supporting platform services.
• Maintain and improve on-premises infrastructure where required.
• Administer and optimise Kubernetes environments, including AWS EKS and OpenShift.
• Manage Helm-based application deployments and platform configuration.
• Support service-mesh technologies and distributed application architectures.
• Build robust container platforms using Docker and related technologies.
• Develop automation to reduce operational overhead and improve platform reliability.
• Design and maintain modern CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions and Argo CD.
• Enable automated, repeatable and low-risk deployments.
• Implement GitOps practices where appropriate.
• Automate repetitive operational processes using Bash, Python or Go.
• Support zero-touch deployment and infrastructure provisioning.
• Lead cloud security and infrastructure posture reviews.
• Implement and maintain AWS security best practices across IAM, networking and workloads.
• Work with services such as GuardDuty, CloudWatch and IAM Identity Center.
• Integrate SAST and DAST practices into development and deployment pipelines.
• Maintain secure software supply chains, including AMI and container image scanning.
• Implement and monitor infrastructure and application security controls.
• Support the organisations ongoing compliance and certification requirements.
• Establish and maintain observability across distributed systems.
• Develop proactive monitoring, alerting and performance-tuning strategies.
• Help maintain service-level objectives and platform availability.
• Investigate and resolve infrastructure and application incidents.
• Coordinate emergency changes, hot fixes and rollbacks.
• Lead post-incident reviews and implement improvements to prevent recurrence.
• Design and maintain AWS Backup strategies.
• Establish and test disaster recovery processes.
• Run regular restore and recovery exercises.
• Maintain appropriate RPO/RTO reporting and dashboards.
• Ensure critical infrastructure can be recovered reliably when required.
• Monitor infrastructure utilisation, availability and capacity.
• Lead regular capacity and availability reviews.
• Identify opportunities for AWS cost optimisation.
• Make effective use of AWS Compute Optimizer, Savings Plans and Graviton.
• Balance performance, availability, security and cost when making infrastructure decisions.
• Support regular technical and security audits.
• Maintain infrastructure provenance and configuration records.
• Implement infrastructure drift detection across Terraform and Helm.
• Help ensure engineering practices remain aligned with relevant industry standards.
• Work with development teams to embed DevSecOps practices throughout the software lifecycle.
• Take ownership and work independently across multiple technical areas when required.
• Communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders and work directly with clients when necessary.

Technologies

• AI
• AWS
• Bash
• CI/CD
• Cloud
• CloudWatch
• DevSecOps
• DevOps
• Docker
• EC2
• GitHub
• GitOps
• Helm
• IAM
• Support
• Karpenter
• Kubeflow
• Kubernetes
• Linux
• MLOps
• Nexus
• OWASP
• OpenShift
• Prometheus
• Python
• Robotics
• Security
• Terraform
• Architect

More

We are a fast-growing UK technology company developing advanced AI and robotics systems for defence, national security, critical infrastructure and other mission-critical environments. This is a senior, hands-on DevOps engineering role with genuine ownership of our cloud and platform infrastructure, the opportunity to influence architecture and DevSecOps practices, and a clear path towards technical or design leadership. You will work in a small, highly collaborative engineering team with flexible hybrid working in the Greater Oxford Area. Benefits include a competitive salary, company pension with employer contribution, private healthcare, 29 days annual leave plus public holidays, and the chance to work on advanced AI, robotics and cloud infrastructure in a role with significant technical ownership.

last updated 40 week of 2026