Lead DevOps Engineer - Fully Remote

Placements24; Richards Bay; Hybrid; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,400,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote work

Medical aid

Retirement fund

Performance bonuses

Learning opportunities

Conference attendance

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking a seasoned Lead DevOps Engineer to drive design, implementation, and maintenance of robust CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure, and automation across a fully remote workforce in South Africa.

You will mentor a high-performing team, promote DevOps best practices, ensure high availability and security, and collaborate with development and QA to accelerate software delivery from anywhere in the country.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS, Eng, or equivalent experience.
• 7+ years in DevOps/SRE with 3+ years in leadership.
• Proven cloud experience (AWS or Azure) and security focus.

Responsibilities

• Design and lead scalable cloud infrastructure architecture.
• Oversee CI/CD pipelines and automation strategies.
• Mentor DevOps team and collaborate with cross-functional teams.
• Maintain security hardening and monitoring across environments.
• Draft documentation and drive on-call readiness.

Skills

Cloud platforms

CI/CD expertise

Leadership

SRE practices

Networking

Security best practices

Monitoring & observability

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering or equivalent

Cloud certifications (optional)

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

Ansible

Jenkins

GitLab CI

CircleCI

Docker

Kubernetes

Bash/Python/PowerShell

Job description

About the Role

Our client, a globally recognized technology firm specializing in scalable software solutions, is actively seeking a seasoned Lead DevOps Engineer to join their completely remote workforce. This pivotal role involves leading the design, implementation, and maintenance of our client's robust CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure, and automation strategies. You will be instrumental in fostering a culture of DevOps excellence, ensuring high availability, scalability, and security across all environments. As a remote-first organization, we empower our engineers with the autonomy and resources to excel from anywhere in **South Africa**. This is an exceptional opportunity to mentor a team, drive technological innovation, and make a significant impact on critical infrastructure projects.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and management of highly available and scalable cloud infrastructure, primarily on **AWS** or **Azure**.
• Implement and maintain robust CI/CD pipelines using tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, or CircleCI.
• Automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and deployment processes using tools such as Terraform, Ansible, or Chef.
• Develop and manage containerization strategies using Docker and orchestration platforms like Kubernetes.
• Implement and enforce security best practices throughout the infrastructure and deployment lifecycle.
• Monitor system performance, identify bottlenecks, and implement solutions for optimization.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to the DevOps team.
• Collaborate with development and QA teams to ensure smooth and efficient software delivery.
• Develop and maintain comprehensive documentation for infrastructure, processes, and tools.
• Participate in on-call rotations to address critical system issues.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 7+ years of experience in DevOps, SRE, or system administration roles, with at least 3 years in a leadership capacity.
• Extensive experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred, Azure also considered).
• Deep expertise in CI/CD principles and tools.
• Strong proficiency in scripting languages (e.g., Bash, Python, PowerShell).
• Hands-on experience with infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tools (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation).
• Proven experience with containerization and orchestration technologies (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Solid understanding of networking concepts, security principles, and system monitoring tools.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to thrive in a fully **remote** and collaborative team environment.

Benefits

• Highly attractive annual salary package of R .
• Full remote work flexibility, allowing you to work from anywhere in **South Africa**.
• Comprehensive medical aid and retirement fund benefits.
• Generous performance-based bonuses.
• Continuous learning and professional development opportunities, including certifications and conferences.
• Exposure to state-of-the-art technologies and challenging projects.
• Collaborative and forward-thinking engineering culture.
• Supportive management and team environment focused on employee growth.