Lead DevOps Engineer

Lead DevOps Engineer Industry: Compliance Technology / RegTech / FinTech SaaS Location: Manchester (Hybrid, 1-2 days a week in the office) Salary: £90,000 - £110,000 (maybe some wiggle room for the right person) Are you a DevOps expert looking for a role where you can lead through technical craft rather than headcount? We're working with a fast-scaling compliance technology business on the hunt for a Lead DevOps Engineer to set the technical direction for how their platform is built, run and scaled. About the Company Our client sits at the centre of how the world's biggest regulated financial firms manage risk. Their platform captures and supervises digital communications across email, MS Teams, WhatsApp, iMessage and more, giving compliance teams the confidence to say yes to new channels and new ways of working, without losing sight of what matters. Following a recent merger, the business now brings together content compliance, distribution and communications supervision into a single, connected platform, governing the entire regulated communication lifecycle end to end. The combined business works with 17 of the top 20 global asset managers and supports more than 1,550 regulated firms worldwide, with AI at the heart of how it surfaces risk and cuts down manual review time. Backed by significant investment and growing fast, particularly across the US, this is a pivotal moment for the engineering team, and a genuinely exciting time to join. The Role This is a technical leadership role, not a people management one. You won't be managing direct reports; instead, you'll be the go-to technical authority for DevOps and platform engineering across the business; setting standards, raising the bar, and getting stuck in alongside the teams that need you most. You'll work closely with the Head of Platform, taking a senior project lead position on the most complex and highest-impact pieces of infrastructure work. You'll embed into multiple engineering teams as needed, coaching and mentoring the engineers around you, without owning their appraisals or career progression. Think: senior technical mentor and escalation point, not line manager. What You'll Do Act as the technical authority for DevOps and platform engineering practice across the businessEmbed into multiple teams on a project basis, leading complex infrastructure and reliability initiatives from a technical standpointCoach and mentor engineers across SRE and platform-embedded (SIP-style) functions, raising the technical bar without formal line managementOwn production platform reliability: monitoring, observability and incident response using tools like Grafana, Sentry, Prometheus, CloudWatch and PagerDutyDrive best practice across AWS: Lambda, ECS Fargate, SQS, SNS, Aurora (PostgreSQL & MySQL), and S3Set the standard for Infrastructure as Code using TerraformShape CI/CD workflows using GitHub Actions, including secrets management and developer experience improvementsSupport capacity planning, load testing and security hardening across the platformRepresent DevOps and platform engineering in wider technical discussions, providing recommendations that shape strategic directionManage critical, cross-team projects with minimal oversight What You'll Bring Deep, hands-on expertise across AWS and modern DevOps practice, with the credibility to lead technically without a management titleStrong Linux administration experience (Amazon Linux 2023 or similar)Scripting and automation skills in Bash, Python, and ideally JavaScript or GoProven experience with Terraform and Infrastructure as Code at scaleExperience with GitHub Actions or equivalent CI/CD toolingA track record of coaching and influencing engineers without direct authority over themComfort operating as a subject matter expert across multiple teams and systems simultaneouslyExcellent communication skills, with the confidence to represent technical thinking in front of senior stakeholdersPrevious experience in a lead or principal DevOps/SRE role is essential; previous people management experience is not required Why Join A genuine technical leadership role, shaping direction without the overhead of formal managementWork at the centre of a newly combined platform serving some of the biggest names in global financial servicesBacked by significant investment and scaling fast, particularly in the USFlexible hybrid working from Manchester, with the option to work from anywhere in the UKThe chance to build best practice from the ground up across a growing, ambitious engineering function The package £90,000 - £110,000 (some wiggle room for the right person)Share options25 days holiday + bank holidays + your birthday offVitality health insurance + cash planJuno wellbeing benefit (£100/month)Enhanced pension + life insurance (4x salary)Latest MacBook Pro + equipment budgetFlexible hybrid working from Manchester, 2-4 office days a month, open to candidates from across the UK At Inara Talent, we believe everyone deserves a fair chance to shine. We connect great people from all backgrounds with opportunities where they can thrive making sure hiring is fair, inclusive, and genuinely diverse. No matter your background, we focus on what matters: your talent.