Software Engineer Lead - Site Reliability

Standard Life (previously Phoenix Group); Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private medical cover

38 days annual leave

Excellent pension

12x salary life assurance

Career breaks

Income protection

Volunteering days

Job summary

Standard Life, a retirement specialist, is hiring a Lead DevOps Engineer to join its Digital Engineering team on a hybrid basis across Birmingham, London, Telford and Edinburgh. You will drive immediate improvements to the Customer Digital Platform, strengthening Azure API platform integration, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD automation, observability and deployment safety.

You will be a hands-on technical lead collaborating with internal squads, partners and third parties to improve reliability,

Qualifications

• Significant experience in lead/ senior DevOps roles with hands-on delivery.
• Strong Azure experience including Azure DevOps and API platform capabilities.
• Proficiency in Terraform, GitHub/GitHub Actions, and CI/CD design.

Responsibilities

• Lead DevOps improvements across the Customer Digital Platform with practical outcomes.
• Strengthen CI/CD pipelines, IaC, deployment safety and release readiness.
• Apply SRE principles to improve availability, monitoring and incident learning.
• Embed reliability and operational-readiness into engineering delivery.
• Coach engineers in modern DevOps practices and AI-enabled delivery.

Skills

DevOps leadership

Azure experience

CI/CD pipelines

Terraform

GitHub Actions

SRE principles

Observability

Incident management

Tools

Azure DevOps

Azure API Management

Terraform

GitHub

GitHub Actions

Job description

Job Description

If you’re a proactive, self-starting engineer who enjoys getting things done and improving the reliability of live digital services, Standard Life could be the place for you. We’re looking for a Lead DevOps Engineer to join our Digital Engineering team.

This role is focused on making immediate, practical improvements across the Customer Digital Platform. You’ll strengthen our DevOps foundations across Azure API platform integration, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD automation, observability, deployment safety and operational readiness, working closely with internal squads, strategic partners and third parties.

Job Type: Permanent

Location: Birmingham, London, Telford, Edinburgh (Hybrid working)

Flexible working: All roles are open to part-time, job-share and other types of flexibility. We will discuss what is important to you and balancing this with business requirements during the recruitment process. You can read more about flexible working here.

Closing Date: 23/09/26

Salary and benefits: £60,000-80,000 (dependant upon experience)plus an indicative bonus range of 16–32%, private medical cover, 38 days annual leave, excellent pension, 12x salary life assurance, career breaks, income protection, 3x volunteering days and much more.

Who are we?

We’re Standard Life, a retirement specialist focused entirely on retirement savings and income. We champion the belief that everyone’s journey to and through retirement can be better, and for more than 200 years, we’ve been helping our customers plan and prepare for their financial futures.

Life today is increasingly complicated, uncertain and unpredictable. People move through different careers, face unexpected moments and navigate important choices. We offer our colleagues flexibility, trust and benefits that work for whatever life brings. In return we expect curiosity, connection, accountability and high standards. We make room for what matters - so you can bring your best, every day.

The role

As a Lead DevOps Engineer, you will be a hands-on contributor and technical lead focused on improving the engineering foundations of the Customer Digital Platform.

You will work across internal squads and with strategic partners, third parties, service, architecture and security teams to improve Azure API platform change, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, deployment safety, release readiness, monitoring, alerting and recovery capability.

Key accountabilities:

• Deliver immediate DevOps improvements across the Customer Digital Platform, with a focus on practical engineering outcomes.
• Improve Azure API platform integration, cloud infrastructure, environment support and route-to-live activity.
• Strengthen CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, GitHub/GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Terraform and automated testing.
• Improve deployment safety, release readiness and operational readiness for customer-facing digital services.
• Apply SRE principles pragmatically to improve availability, recoverability, monitoring and incident learning.
• Strengthen monitoring, logging, tracing, alerting and service-health dashboards across digitally connected workloads.
• Reduce single points of failure and improve failover, degradation handling and recovery testing.
• Embed reliability, security, performance and operational-readiness expectations into engineering delivery.
• Support major incidents, post-incident reviews and root-cause analysis, ensuring improvement actions are owned and delivered.
• Use DORA, availability, recovery and operational metrics to identify risks and evidence progress.
• Enable practical AI adoption across the SDLC, including developer tooling, code quality, testing, documentation and delivery-flow improvements.
• Work with strategic partners, third parties and other suppliers to improve DevOps capability, technical escalation, service improvement and knowledge transfer.
• Coach engineers in modern engineering practices, automation and AI-enabled delivery where it improves quality and throughput.

What are we looking for?

• Significant experience as a DevOps Lead, Senior DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer or hands‑on technical lead.
• A proactive, self-starting approach with evidence of identifying issues, shaping solutions and delivering improvements without heavy direction.
• Strong practical Azure experience, including Azure DevOps, Azure API Management or comparable API platform capabilities.
• Hands‑on expertise in Terraform, GitHub, GitHub Actions, CI/CD pipeline design, deployment automation and release support.
• Practical knowledge of incident management, problem management, root-cause analysis and operational readiness.
• Good awareness of Site Reliability Engineering principles, with the ability to apply them pragmatically to DevOps and platform improvement work.
• Experience improving observability through monitoring, logging, tracing, alerting, service-health dashboards and actionable telemetry.
• Experience improving resilience through failover, graceful degradation, recovery testing and practical reliability improvements.
• Understanding of deployment safety, release automation, progressive delivery, performance and reliability engineering techniques.
• Experience using or shaping AI-enabled engineering practices across the SDLC, such as AI-assisted coding, automated testing, code review, documentation and developer productivity improvements.

We want to hire the whole version of you.

We are committed to ensuring that everyone feels accepted and welcome applicants from all backgrounds. If your experience looks different from what we’ve advertised and you believe that you can bring value to the role, we’d love to hear from you.

If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, please let us know so we can help you to be at your best.

We’re reviewing applications as they come in, so apply early to avoid missing out.

Find out more about working at Standard Life

• Guide for Candidates: standardlifeplc.pagetiger.com/guideforcandidates
• Find or get answers from our colleagues: www.standardlifeplc.com/careers/talk-to-us