Lead DevOps Engineer (Azure) - Newport, South Wales

Lead DevOps Engineer (SC Clearance Required)

Location: Newport, South Wales (Hybrid, 1 day per week on site)
Type: Permanent
Salary: £66,000 - £78,000 depending on skills and experience

About the Role

A UK public sector organisation is looking for a Lead DevOps Engineer to join its Platform Engineering function as part of a major digital transformation programme.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role where you'll be responsible for setting direction, leading a team of DevOps engineers, and remaining close to the technology and delivery. The successful candidate will play a key role in modernising platforms, improving engineering capability, and driving DevOps best practice across multiple teams.

What You'll Be Doing

• Building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and developing infrastructure as code.
• Supporting cloud deployments, troubleshooting issues, and contributing code where required.
• Leading, coaching, and line managing a team of DevOps engineers.
• Driving technical decision-making and promoting DevOps best practices across teams and services.
• Working closely with engineering, architecture, and delivery teams to modernise platforms and improve delivery capability.
• Influencing technical direction across a number of workstreams within a complex transformation environment.

About You

You'll bring substantial practical experience across cloud engineering, automation, and the software delivery lifecycle, alongside a passion for developing engineers and improving ways of working.

Key experience includes:

• Strong hands-on experience with Azure, Azure DevOps, Terraform, AKS, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Solid scripting and software engineering capability.
• Proven experience leading, mentoring, and coaching engineers.
• The ability to make an immediate impact within an established engineering function.
• At least five years' continuous UK residency, making you eligible for Security Check (SC) clearance.
• The ability to attend the Newport office on a regular basis and participate in in-person interview stages.

What's On Offer

• Salary of £66,000 - £78,000, including a staged retention and technical allowance that increases over four years.
• Excellent defined-benefit pension with a generous employer contribution.
• 25 days' annual leave rising to 30 days, plus public holidays.
• Hybrid and agile working arrangements.
• A collaborative engineering culture focused on learning, continuous improvement, and knowledge sharing.
• Long-term career stability within a high-profile national transformation programme.