Principal DevOps Engineer

Principal DevOps Engineer Technology Delivery About the Role: We are looking for a Principal DevOps Engineer to act as the senior-most technical leader within DevOps, driving the organisation's approach to CI/CD, deployment, observability, automation and reliability. This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will spend a significant amount of time building production-grade solutions, developing reusable engineering patterns and establishing standards that enable teams to deliver software faster, more safely and more reliably. You will act as a technical force multiplier across engineering teams and delivery partners, working closely with Architecture, Platform Engineering, Software Engineering, QA, Security and Product. Guiding principle: Pave paths. Automate everything that should be automated. Make the right thing the easy thing. Key Responsibilities DevOps Architecture & Engineering Standards Define CI/CD, deployment, observability and reliability standards across the engineering organisation.Author RFCs and Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) to drive technical decisions and alignment.Lead the evolution of DevOps platforms, tooling and engineering practices.Partner with Architecture on long-term technical strategy and roadmap.Establish reusable frameworks and engineering patterns across internal and external delivery teams. Hands-On Engineering Write production-grade code, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and CI/CD pipelines.Develop reference implementations that engineering teams can adopt and build upon.Lead by example in engineering best practices, automation and operational excellence.Conduct technical reviews and review pull requests for critical engineering initiatives. CI/CD Platform Engineering Own and evolve the organisation's CI/CD platform, including reusable components, plugins, pattern libraries and developer experience.Drive improvements across key DORA metrics, including deployment frequency, lead time for change, change failure rate and MTTR.Embed quality gates, security controls and progressive delivery into deployment pipelines.Continuously improve the developer experience and reduce friction across the software delivery lifecycle. Observability & Reliability Engineering Define standards for metrics, logging, tracing, monitoring and alerting.Drive adoption of Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and error budget practices.Lead production reliability, resilience and capacity planning initiatives.Facilitate post-incident reviews and promote a culture of continuous learning and improvement. Infrastructure as Code & Automation Define and maintain Infrastructure as Code standards using Terraform, Pulumi or equivalent technologies.Develop self-service platform capabilities for engineering teams.Automate operational tasks, processes and runbooks wherever possible.Build and maintain reusable automation frameworks and libraries. Security & DevSecOps Integrate SAST, DAST, dependency scanning, secrets management and software supply chain security into CI/CD pipelines.Partner with Security teams to establish and implement DevSecOps practices.Promote least-privilege access and Zero Trust principles.Automate compliance processes and audit evidence wherever possible. Technical Leadership & Mentorship Coach and mentor DevOps engineers across all levels of experience.Lead technical communities of practice and knowledge-sharing initiatives.Support technical recruitment, interviewing and assessment processes.Develop future technical leaders within the organisation. Cross-Functional Collaboration Work closely with Engineering, Platform, Software Engineering, QA, Security, Architecture and Product teams.Act as a trusted technical advisor across multiple disciplines.Translate complex technical concepts into clear, practical and decision-ready recommendations.Build alignment across technical teams through strong written and verbal communication.Collaborate effectively with external delivery and technology partners. Continuous Improvement & Innovation Evaluate emerging technologies and engineering practices through evidence-based experimentation.Maintain a continuous improvement backlog for DevOps capabilities.Share knowledge through internal documentation, presentations and industry engagement.Help shape the long-term vision and roadmap for DevOps engineering. Core Skills & Experience The successful candidate will bring strong experience across: CI/CD platform engineering and automationCloud platform engineeringInfrastructure as Code, particularly Terraform, Pulumi or equivalentObservability and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)DevSecOps and security automationProduction reliability and operational excellenceAutomation and self-service platform engineeringTechnical architecture and engineering standardsCross-functional technical leadershipMentoring and developing engineering talentStrong written and verbal communication skills You should be comfortable operating at both strategic and highly technical levels, with the ability to define organisational standards while remaining hands-on in the implementation of those standards. Reporting Structure & Scope Reports to: Director of DevOps Engineering The Principal DevOps Engineer will work closely with: Engineering LeadershipPlatform EngineeringSoftware EngineeringQASecurityArchitectureProduct teamsExternal delivery partners The role will typically cover CI/CD platforms, infrastructure automation, developer enablement, observability and reliability capabilities supporting multiple products and business domains. Measures of Success Success in the role will be measured through improvements in: Deployment frequency and lead time for changeChange failure rate and Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR)CI/CD platform reliability and developer experienceCloud cost optimisationProduction system health, resilience and reliabilityAutomation effectivenessReduction in manual operational effortAdoption and consistency of engineering standards across teams What We're Looking For: This role is suited to a senior/principal-level DevOps or Platform Engineering professional who combines deep technical expertise with strong technical leadership. You will be someone who can design the strategy, build the platform and influence the engineers using it - creating scalable, secure and reliable ways for engineering teams to deliver software. If you are passionate about automation, platform engineering, cloud infrastructure, reliability and making engineering teams more effective, this is an opportunity to have organisation-wide technical impact.