Principal DevOps Engineer

Nicoll Curtin; Ireland; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 165,000; Full time

Job summary

Nicoll Curtin is seeking a Principal DevOps Engineer to provide technical leadership across cloud, platform engineering, DevOps, SRE and modern software delivery. You will help drive the adoption of GitOps, Infrastructure as Code, Kubernetes, observability and AI-assisted engineering, while improving platform reliability, automation and developer experience.

You will lead design and adoption of modern DevOps practices, drive GitOps across environments, and build scalable AWS/Kubernetes

Qualifications

• 6+ years designing and supporting enterprise CI/CD platforms and distributed systems.
• 3+ years' AWS experience across cloud-native platforms and migration/modernisation.
• Strong software engineering experience with Python, Java or Node.js, especially for automation.
• Hands-on GitOps experience with Argo CD, Flux or similar.
• Experience with Terraform, CloudFormation and/or Ansible.
• CI/CD experience with Jenkins, Docker and Ansible.
• Experience with observability platforms such as Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, ELK/OpenSearch or OpenTelemetry.
• Strong understanding of SRE, platform engineering, reliability and distributed systems.
• Experience supporting mission-critical production environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and adoption of modern DevOps, SRE and Platform Engineering practices.
• Drive GitOps and Infrastructure as Code across cloud and engineering environments.
• Build and improve highly available, scalable AWS and Kubernetes platforms.
• Develop internal platforms and self-service capabilities for engineering teams.
• Improve reliability through automation, observability, resilience and incident management.
• Introduce AI-assisted engineering, AIOps and emerging agentic AI capabilities into workflows.
• Work with engineering, architecture, infrastructure and security teams.
• Lead complex production issues, root-cause analysis and reliability improvements.
• Mentor engineers and help establish technical and operational standards.

Skills

Technical leadership

DevOps

SRE

Kubernetes

GitOps

IaC

Automation scripting

AWS

Observability tooling

Tools

Argo CD

Flux

Terraform

CloudFormation

Ansible

Datadog

Prometheus

Grafana

ELK/OpenSearch

Job description

Principal DevOps Engineer

We are looking for a Principal DevOps Engineer to provide technical leadership across cloud, platform engineering, DevOps, SRE and modern software delivery.

You'll help drive the adoption of GitOps, Infrastructure as Code, Kubernetes, observability and AI-assisted engineering, while improving platform reliability, automation and developer experience.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and adoption of modern DevOps, SRE and Platform Engineering practices.




• Drive GitOps and Infrastructure as Code across cloud and engineering environments.




• Build and improve highly available, scalable AWS and Kubernetes platforms.




• Develop internal platforms and self-service capabilities for engineering teams.




• Improve reliability through automation, observability, resilience and incident management.




• Introduce AI-assisted engineering, AIOps and emerging agentic AI capabilities into development and operational workflows.




• Work closely with engineering, architecture, infrastructure and security teams.




• Lead complex production issues, root-cause analysis and reliability improvements.




• Mentor engineers and help establish technical and operational standards.

Key Requirements

• 6+ years' experience designing and supporting enterprise CI/CD platforms and distributed systems.




• 3+ years' AWS experience, ideally across cloud-native platforms and migration/modernisation.




• Strong software engineering experience with Python, Java or Node.js, particularly for automation.




• Strong Kubernetes and containerisation experience.




• Hands-on GitOps experience with Argo CD, Flux or similar.




• Strong experience with Terraform, CloudFormation and/or Ansible.




• Strong CI/CD experience with technologies such as Jenkins, Docker and Ansible.




• Experience with observability platforms such as Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, ELK/OpenSearch or OpenTelemetry.




• Strong understanding of SRE, platform engineering, reliability and distributed systems.




• Experience supporting mission-critical production environments.

AI / Emerging Technology

Experience with AI-assisted engineering tools such as GitHub Copilot, Amazon Q, ChatGPT Enterprise, Cursor or similar is highly desirable.

Exposure to AIOps, agentic AI, AI-driven automation or intelligent incident management would be a strong advantage.

Ideal Profile

We're looking for someone who can operate at Principal/technical-lead level, combining strong hands-on engineering capability with the ability to influence architecture, engineering standards and platform strategy across multiple teams.

An on-call rotation may be required.