DevOps Engineer

Matchtech website job advert (full detail)

DevOps Engineer (V06382)

Role: DevOps Engineer (Contract)
Location: Preston, Lancashire (hybrid)
Working pattern: 37 hours per week, 1-2 days per month onsite
Contract length: 9 months
Rate: £525/day PAYE or £709.70/day Umbrella
IR35: Inside IR35
Clearance: BPSS & SC required (UK Eyes Only)

We're looking for an experienced DevOps Engineer to join an Engineering Data Platform (EDP) team supporting AI/ML workloads. You'll apply deep technical expertise across infrastructure automation, environment provisioning and deployment pipelines, working closely with Data Engineers, MLOps Engineers and Solution Architects to ensure the platform meets performance, scalability, cost and compliance requirements.

There is flexibility on base location across the UK for the right candidate skillset, however you must be able to attend site in Preston 1-2 days per month.

The role

This position focuses on building and operating secure, repeatable and auditable delivery pipelines and infrastructure, aligned to enterprise platform standards (including Landing Zone policies).

You will:

• Design, maintain and support CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI/CD) enabling frequent, reliable deployments
• Deploy and operate workloads on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
• Manage containerisation using Docker, including building and publishing images to internal registries
• Implement Infrastructure as Code using Terraform (including network, security and compute resources)
• Support workflow orchestration, including Airflow
• Contribute to platform security, auditing and cost management best practices
• Participate as a core contributor within the team and support architecture discussions / working groups

Core duties (day-to-day)

Typical responsibilities include (but are not limited to):

• Designing and implementing GitLab-based CI/CD pipelines for deploying containerised services to AKS
• Building and maintaining Dockerfiles and container image workflows; pushing to internal container registries
• Defining and managing AKS cluster configurations to support secure, scalable workloads
• Writing and maintaining reusable Terraform modules to provision infrastructure in line with Azure Landing Zone standards
• Managing secrets, configuration and access using Azure Key Vault and Azure AD
• Supporting connectivity between on-prem services and Azure cloud infrastructure (hybrid networking / private connectivity, including GreenLink)
• Working with MLOps and Data Engineers to ensure environments are reproducible, reliable and auditable across multiple environments
• Supporting observability and platform health:
  • logging and metrics
  • monitoring using tooling such as Azure Monitor
  • and where applicable Prometheus / Grafana
• Troubleshooting infrastructure and deployment issues, and continuously improving automation and reliability

What you'll be accountable for

• Being a core contributor to the EDP team and participating in architecture discussions (e.g., working groups)
• Championing automation and DevOps best practice
• Helping define infrastructure patterns and contributing to reusable platform modules
• Supporting governance for new marketplace requests via a proof-of-concept (POC) process

Knowledge, skills and experience required

Essential technical knowledge

• Strong understanding of Azure Landing Zone principles and standards, including:
  • vNet design
  • RBAC
  • networking and hybrid connectivity approaches
• Strong CI/CD knowledge, with particular experience in GitLab CI/CD
• Strong containerisation and orchestration experience:
  • Docker
  • AKS (Kubernetes)
• Infrastructure as Code expertise:
  • Terraform (or equivalent such as Bicep, if you can demonstrate strong IaC capability)
• Networking fundamentals including hub/spoke topology and use of private endpoints

Essential hands‑on skills

• Writing, maintaining and debugging CI/CD pipelines
• Building and publishing container images and improving container build workflows
• Managing the infrastructure lifecycle in Azure using IaC
• Troubleshooting deployments and infrastructure-level issues
• Working effectively across technical and non-technical stakeholders in a delivery environment
• Applying secure build/deploy practices with an attention to auditability and compliance

Qualifications

• Relevant degree or equivalent practical experience

Security / clearance requirements

Due to the nature of the work, candidates must be eligible for and able to maintain:

• BPSS
• SC
• UK Eyes Only restrictions apply