Devops Engineer (Associate Specialist)

Business Unit: Discovery Central Services

Function: Information Technology

Date: 11 Apr

Development Operations (DevOps) Engineer

About Discovery
Discovery's core purpose is to make people healthier and to enhance and protect their lives.

We seek out and invest in exceptional individuals who understand and support our core purpose, and whose own values align with those of Discovery.

Our fast-paced and dynamic environment enables smart, self-driven people to be their best.

About Technology Services
Technology Services provides cost-effective, secure, reliable and scalable infrastructure and platforms, for the Discovery group of companies, in a consistent manner that are easily supported and measurable in support of the company vision to transform global financial services.

Technology Services provides consistent standards and support across all operating platforms, resulting in secure and predictable outcomes for application platforms and business services.

Key Purpose

The DevOps engineer is a software engineer / developer with good knowledge of technology infrastructure and development operations that will work in the Platform as a Service (PaaS) team.

His / her purpose is to work with software developers, infrastructure administrators, and enterprise architects to plan for, implement, and efficiently operate and maintain software solutions that will increase development and infrastructure teams' software delivery and operations performance of their products and services.

The Platform as a Service team is a business enabler, by providing our customers (business, development teams and technology services) with the information, platform services, tools and automation needed to increase their speed of innovation, enhance software delivery and operational performance, understand their services better and to build cost-effective, secure, reliable and scalable products and services faster and in a consistent manner.

The DevOps Engineer design and implements system or solution designs to improve development and operational practices, including continuous integration, continuous deployment and the automation of manual and repetitive operations and processes.

He / She is a thought leader in the DevOps field and is capable of consulting with multiple teams to determine the best possible toolset to ensure that software projects can be delivered faster, safer and with higher quality and also operated in the best possible way after deployment.

Using the latest tools and technologies, this role will support environments hosted within internal data centers and in the cloud, implementing solutions to: provision and manage environments; perform software development builds and automated testing; and monitor existing infrastructure.

Areas of Responsibility

1. Design and implement new solutions and improve resilience of the current DevOps environment.
2. Work closely with development and infrastructure teams to troubleshoot issues on the platforms services provided; understand requirements to enhance platform services in use through automation or tools; assist with optimising and simplifying deployment; and to measure the software delivery and operational performance.
3. Integrate various tools in the DevOps toolchain to accelerate development teams' velocity while maintaining high standards for quality and consistency.
4. Design and develop APIs / plugins / integration for tools and applications.
5. Assist with the design and implementation of continuous delivery and integration pipelines and automation workflows across both on-premise and public cloud solutions.
6. Automate parts of the development delivery process using scripts and other appropriate tools, including infrastructure provisioning and day 2 operations.
7. Create and maintain technical documentation, including processes and user guides for integrated tools and scripts.
8. Create failure management processes and tools so outages can be handled without causing a loss of delivery.
9. Champion changes to tools and processes to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the development team and the availability of resiliency of technology infrastructure.
10. Advise on new technologies and methodologies by becoming an expert in emerging technologies and tools relevant to development operations for both on-premise and cloud solutions.
11. Perpetuate a DevOps culture.

Personal Attributes and Skills

1. Strong technical leadership ability.
2. Good analytical skills.
3. Good interpersonal and communication skills.
4. Operating and understanding of Linux and Windows.
5. Good working knowledge of Kubernetes and Docker.
6. Deep end-to-end understanding of the software development lifecycle, methodologies and tool chains including source control, build automation, version control, testing, code quality, deployment and release.
7. Experience with Lean / Agile process.
8. Good understanding of DevOps principles and continuous curiosity about DevOps, by staying up to date with the latest developments in the field.
9. Experience with continuous integration and continuous delivery.
10. Good working knowledge of Cloud Native development practices as well as experience with implementing and deploying public cloud solutions (AWS and Azure preferred).
11. Exposure to Ansible.

Education and Experience

1. Matric.
2. Strong Computer Science fundamentals.
3. Computer Science degree or (or similar engineering discipline) equivalent preferred.
4. 3 years of experience with software development, system architecture design and / or system integration.
5. 2 years of experience with DevOps practice.
6. Experience in a similar role – Advantageous.
7. Networking knowledge in AWS, Azure and Cisco - Advantageous.

Employment Equity

The Company's approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process.

As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.