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 life cycle, 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.