Lead DevOps Engineer-Azure

We are looking for a Azure DevOps Engineer (Inside IR35) for a 6-month contract. Hybrid working with occasional travel to London.

PLEASE NOTE: SC Clearance is an essential requirement for this role, as a minimum you must be willing & eligible to undergo checks. Please note, due to the exceptional requirements of this position (short-term nature of this role and speed at which we require a postholder in situ) preference may be given to candidates who meet all of the essential criteria and hold active security clearance.

The Lead DevOps Engineer will be responsible for designing, implementing and supporting cloud, infrastructure and DevOps platforms that enable secure, resilient and automated delivery of services. The role will work closely with engineering, architecture, security and operational teams to improve deployment, observability, platform reliability and infrastructure automation.

You will have proven experience leading platform, DevOps, infrastructure, or software engineering work in a complex environment. You are confident operating to agile and product-centred principles and will thrive on collaborating with technical colleagues to turn common engineering needs into reusable platform capabilities, standards, and patterns.

Alongside delivery, the role will support broader technology modernisation and cross-cutting engineering improvement. This may include developing self-service routes to approved tooling and infrastructure, improving CI/CD and release practices, strengthening observability and operational readiness, reducing duplication, improving automated testing and quality gates, and creating paved paths that help teams deliver secure and maintainable services with confidence.

As a Azure DevOps Engineer your main responsibilities will be:

* Lead the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of Azure-based platform services and DevOps capabilities.

* Develop and maintain self-service platform solutions, reusable engineering patterns, and automation frameworks.

* Drive CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), containerisation, observability, and automated testing best practices.

* Provide technical leadership and strategic direction across platform, DevOps, development, security, and infrastructure teams.

* Collaborate with stakeholders to identify common engineering needs and deliver scalable, secure, and maintainable platform solutions.

* Champion cloud modernisation initiatives, improving developer experience, reliability, security, and operational efficiency.

* Establish and enforce platform standards, governance, lifecycle management, and engineering best practices.

* Mentor, coach, and support engineering teams through knowledge sharing, documentation, training, and technical guidance.

* Lead platform improvements including automation, monitoring, release management, technical debt reduction, and operational readiness.

* Evaluate and adopt emerging technologies and modern engineering practices to enhance platform capabilities and business value.

Essential:

* Azure DevOps, CI/CD, IaC, containerisation, and secure Azure cloud platform engineering.

* Building and managing self-service platforms, automation, and reusable DevOps capabilities.

* Experience in Docker and IaC.

* Observability, monitoring, release management, automated testing, and quality gate implementation.

* Technical leadership across DevOps, engineering, infrastructure, and security teams.

* Agile delivery, cloud modernisation, platform governance, and DevSecOps best practices

In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following "this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different".