Job Description

Role: Lead DevOps Engineer

Industry: Digital, SaaS, Compliance

Location: Manchester / Hybrid (up to 2 days a week in the office)

Salary: £90,000 - £110,000

Are you a DevOps expert ready to take your career to the next level? We're looking for a Lead DevOps Engineer to join an innovative tech company doing some amazing things across the globe.

About the Company:

Our client is a fast-growing Manchester-based scale-up with a global reputation for helping Financial Services firms manage risk through cutting-edge archiving and supervision solutions. Their platform captures and monitors all digital communications—whether it’s emails, MS Teams conversations, or iMessages—to ensure businesses stay compliant with regulations, avoiding costly fines like the $3bn issued by the SEC in 2023.

Their mission is simple: to allow firms to communicate freely and confidently, with the knowledge that all communications are monitored and flagged in real-time for non-compliance. Having recently secured significant investment from a US growth equity firm, they are now poised for the next stage of rapid expansion, and they’re looking for top talent to help take them to the next level.

Cloud Native: Our cloud infrastructure adapts to scale according to your requirements.

Data Sovereignty: Choose any location for storing your data to comply with procurement and storage regulations.

Fidelity: Record dynamic web content, including complex applications made with modern frameworks, which others cannot.

SaaS Platform: Utilise an intuitive platform to access all archives, complete with full-text search, analysis, and reporting features.

Search & Download: Easily search for and download archives straight from the platform.

What You'll Do:

You will be responsible for leading the DevOps team, looking after the current SRE and SIP engineers whilst at the same time growing the team through hiring, coaching and career progression. 

The team is composed of engineers responsible for the following capabilities. You will need to be able to lead this team, whilst also being hands on. You should have a deep understanding of Cloud and DevOps so you can be a point of escalation if needed.  

SRE Team Responsibilities:

Production Platform Management: Ensure the production platform runs smoothly, focusing on web crawl and message processing.

Monitoring & Observability: Build and maintain monitoring tools like Grafana, Sentry, Prometheus, Cloudwatch, and PagerDuty.

Linux Administration: Manage systems using Amazon Linux 2023.

Scripting & Automation: Utilise Bash, Python, and potentially JavaScript for automation.

AWS Administration: Handle AWS services including Lambda, ECS Fargate, SQS, SNS, Aurora PostgreSQL & MySQL, and S3. Implement Infrastructure as Code with Terraform.

CI/CD Workflows: Use Github Actions for seamless CI/CD processes.

SIP Team Responsibilities:

Embedded DevOps Support: Work closely with software engineering teams to design and build CI and infrastructure.

Developer Experience: Enhance workflows and address security issues.

Programming & Scripting: Work with JavaScript, Go, or Python, and use Bash for scripting.

Infrastructure Management: Employ Terraform for Infrastructure as Code.

Secrets Management: Ensure secure handling within CI/CD workflows.

What You Bring:

Mastery & Mentorship: Lead the team with your technical expertise, guiding through capacity planning, load testing, and security improvements.

Strategic Tech & Tooling: Be a subject matter expert on multiple systems and drive strategic decisions.

Innovative Scope: Develop and implement new tooling, processes, and procedures to set new benchmarks.

Judgment & Leadership: Manage critical projects with minimal oversight, setting the standard for professional excellence.

Engagement & Ownership: Independently lead projects and manage resources.

Exceptional Communication: Represent the company in larger discussions and provide valuable recommendations.

Planning Prodigy: Contribute to and execute large projects aligned with company strategy.

Flexible & Confident: Balance technical recommendations with team needs and industry best practices.

Trust & Reliability: Deliver high-quality, error-free results while helping others improve.

Coach & Collaborator: Offer sought-after technical leadership and guidance.

Your Toolkit:

• Expertise in capacity planning, load testing, and security improvements.

• Leadership experience, managing multiple people across the organisation. 

• Focus on career development, putting best practices in place to promote growth and focus on employee retention. 

• Have previous experience hiring, and building an effective team of engineers

• Strong skills in AWS services and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform).

• Scripting abilities in Bash, Python, and potentially JavaScript.

• Experience with CI/CD workflows using Github Actions.

Why Join Us?

Remote Flexibility: Work from anywhere in the UK as long as you can come to the Manchester office as few times a month 

Impactful Work: Innovate processes and contribute to significant projects.

Growth Opportunities: Lead and mentor a team, paving the way for your professional development.
Benefits: Flexible benefits aimed at improving your life outside of work.