DevOps Architect

A key client of ours are seeking an experienced and forward-thinking Platform Architect to define and evolve the strategic direction of their platforms, automation capabilities, and engineering practices.

Key Responsibilities

Platform Strategy & Architecture

• Define and own the platform architecture strategy, ensuring alignment with business and technology objectives.
• Design end-to-end platform solutions covering infrastructure, automation, CI/CD, and operational tooling.
• Establish architectural principles, patterns, and standards (e.g., IaC, GitOps, immutable infrastructure).
• Drive consistency, reuse, and standardisation across platforms and environments.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and guide their adoption through proof of concepts and strategic roadmaps.
• Work with architects and principle architects across practices and to define roadmaps and architecture

Platform Engineering & Automation Leadership

• Provide technical direction for CI/CD pipeline design, automation frameworks, and Infrastructure as Code practices.
• Ensure platforms are designed for scalability, resilience, and operational efficiency.
• Champion automation-first approaches to reduce manual effort and increase reliability.
• Oversee the design and implementation of reusable platform components and shared services.

Architecture Governance & Design Authority

• Act as a design authority for platform-related initiatives, reviewing and approving architectural decisions.
• Ensure solutions meet non-functional requirements including performance, scalability, security, and maintainability.
• Produce and govern high-quality architectural artefacts (diagrams, standards, reference architectures).
• Lead design workshops and contribute to technical decision-making across projects.

Collaboration & Technical Leadership

• Work closely with engineering, development, operations, and security teams to ensure alignment and successful delivery.
• Provide mentorship and technical leadership to Platform Engineers and wider engineering teams.
• Promote DevOps and SRE best practices across the organisation.
• Enable teams by defining clear platform capabilities, usage patterns, and self-service models.
• Ensure secure-by-design principles are embedded in all platform architectures.
• Guide platform-level security controls, identity management, and compliance requirements.
• Oversee vulnerability management strategies and platform hardening approaches.
• Align platform design with regulatory and organisational compliance standards.

Skills & Experience

• Extensive experience designing and implementing platform architectures in Agile/DevOps environments.
• Strong expertise in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible, ARM, DSC, or equivalent).
• Deep knowledge of CI/CD tooling and delivery patterns (GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, GitHub Actions).
• Experience with containerisation and orchestration platforms (Docker, Kubernetes, Podman).
• Strong understanding of cloud and hybrid infrastructure (Azure, Azure Stack Hub, or similar).
• Proficiency in scripting and automation (e.g., Python, PowerShell, Bash).
• Experience designing secure, scalable, and highly available systems.
• Strong documentation and communication skills, with the ability to produce clear architectural artefacts.
• Ability to influence, guide, and align multiple teams and stakeholders.
• Experience defining platform strategies or roadmaps at an organisational level.
• Knowledge of observability and monitoring solutions (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Splunk).
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks and continuous compliance tooling.
• Experience with large-scale or enterprise platform transformation initiatives.
• Exposure to GitOps and modern platform engineering practices.
• Strong stakeholder management and customer engagement experience.