Lead DevOps Engineer

At The National College, we empower the education workforce to transform children’s lives. Our all-in-one platform helps schools, trusts and nurseries stay compliant, raise standards, and reduce staff workload — all through intuitive, powerful software.

If educators need it, we build it.

We’ve created a unique platform combining the world’s largest CPD and policy library with custom-built tools — developed in collaboration with thousands of schools and over 1,000 education experts.

The Role

We are looking for a Lead DevOps Engineer to take ownership of the uptime, scalability, security, and efficiency of our customer‑facing platforms, while enabling fast, safe delivery of new features.

This is a hands‑on individual contributor role, working closely with the CTO, internal engineering teams, and external technical partners.

You will be responsible for the reliability and performance of our cloud infrastructure—primarily in AWS, with some services in Azure. This includes infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, observability, system security, and overall operational excellence.

Our platforms support education institutions across the UK and internationally, where uptime, performance, and reliability are critical. This role sits at the heart of maintaining and improving that stability.

We’re looking for someone who thrives in high‑availability environments and takes real ownership of production systems—balancing reliability with the need for rapid, continuous delivery.

You will be comfortable:

• Taking end‑to‑end ownership of infrastructure reliability and operational performance
• Balancing production stability with fast, iterative delivery
• Diagnosing and resolving live issues quickly and with precision
• Operating with a high level of independence and sound technical judgement
• Collaborating closely with developers, leadership, and external partners
• Continuously improving automation, systems, and operational practices

This role is well suited to engineers who enjoy solving complex problems, building resilient systems, and working close to real‑world production environments.

Job Requirements

• 5+ years’ experience in DevOps, SRE, or cloud infrastructure engineering
• Proven experience operating and supporting live, business‑critical production systems
• Strong track record of automating infrastructure and deployment processes
• Experience managing high‑availability, scalable cloud environments
• Experience working closely with development teams to enable modern software delivery practices
• Demonstrated ability to diagnose and resolve complex production issues under pressure

Skills and Competencies

• Strong understanding of modern software delivery, infrastructure, and operational practices
• Excellent troubleshooting skills across systems, services, and infrastructure layers
• Deep experience designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines
• Hands‑on experience with AWS in live production environments (Azure experience beneficial)
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (e.g. Terraform) and automation practices
• Familiarity with monitoring, logging, and alerting systems to support reliability and incident response
• Experience configuring and running containerised environments (e.g. Docker)
• Experience working with relational databases (ideally MySQL or Aurora)
• Development experience beneficial (e.g. PHP, Laravel, Ruby on Rails, Vue)
• Experience with automated testing frameworks (e.g. PHPUnit, PHPStan, Selenium) is a plus
• Experience with video delivery platforms or learning management systems is advantageous
• Strong attention to detail, particularly in production environments
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and problem‑solving skills
• Ability to work independently and make sound technical decisions
• Comfortable operating in a fast‑paced, high‑availability environment
• Structured and organised approach to incident management and issue resolution

Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
• AWS, Azure, or cloud certifications are desirable but not essential
• DevOps, Kubernetes, or infrastructure‑related certifications are advantageous

Job Benefits

At The National College, we’re passionate about helping organisations grow and thrive through knowledge and connection. You’ll be part of a company that values people, encourages personal development, and celebrates success. You’ll work with people who value collaboration, innovation, and high standards.

You’ll also be able to benefit from:

• Life Assurance
• Enhanced Maternity, Paternity, Shared Parental and Adoption Pay
• 24/7 Online GP
• Mental Health & Wellbeing support
• Charity Day
• 25 Days Holiday, rising to 30 days
• Professional Study Support
• Plus more