6 Months Contract (highly likely to extend past that) Hybrid role, Galway based (Must be based within a commutable distance from their Galway office) €550-€600 Daily Rate Eligible candidates must hold a minimum of Stamp4 Visa and be based in the Galway area. Our client, a leading financial services firm, is seeking a Principal DevOps Engineer to provide technical leadership across cloud, platform engineering and operational excellence. This is a highly senior role with a strong focus on SRE, platform design, AWS and Kubernetes, rather than being focused solely on build and release. The successful person will help shape modern software delivery practices, driving the adoption of DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, GitOps, observability, intelligent automation and AI-enabled engineering capabilities.
Your Role
- Lead the adoption of GitOps and Platform Engineering practices to improve deployment reliability, scalability, governance and developer experience.
- Drive AI-enabled DevOps initiatives that reduce operational toil and accelerate engineering productivity through intelligent automation.
- Identify opportunities to leverage Agentic AI capabilities for incident management, deployment validation, operational workflows and production support within established governance frameworks.
- Partner with development, engineering, architecture, infrastructure and security teams to establish next-generation DevOps capabilities incorporating GitOps, AIOps and AI-driven operations.
- Support the design, implementation and adoption of modern DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), GitOps and AI-powered engineering practices.
- Accelerate software delivery while improving reliability through predictive insights, intelligent automation and autonomous operational capabilities.
- Support development squads with modern DevOps practices, cloud adoption and engineering excellence initiatives.
- Design, implement and support enterprise-scale CI/CD platforms and distributed systems.
- Build and operate cloud-native solutions in AWS, including infrastructure modernisation and migration initiatives.
- Build and operate Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) and enable self-service engineering capabilities.
- Deliver high-quality, maintainable, secure and cost-effective solutions that meet functional and non-functional business requirements.
- Define and execute enterprise-grade reliability and observability strategies to ensure critical systems remain highly available and performant.
- Leverage technical, operational and financial data to drive efficiency, reduce complexity and eliminate manual effort.
- Establish and promote engineering standards, platform consistency and operational excellence across development and SRE organisations.
- Lead troubleshooting and resolution of complex, cross-functional issues spanning applications, infrastructure, networks and cloud platforms.
- Mentor and coach engineers and technical leaders in reliability engineering, observability, automation and cloud-native best practices.
- Apply automation, observability, resilience testing, chaos engineering and continuous improvement to engineer reliability into production environments.
- Participation in an on-call rotation may be required.
Your Experience
- Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Engineering or a related technical field; master's degree preferred.
- 9+ years of hands‑on experience designing, implementing and supporting enterprise-scale CI/CD platforms and distributed systems.
- 3+ years of experience building and operating cloud‑native solutions in AWS, including infrastructure modernisation and migration initiatives.
- 3+ years of software development experience using Python, Java or Node.js, with a strong focus on automation and software engineering best practices.
- 2+ years of hands‑on GitOps experience using platforms such as Argo CD, Flux CD or equivalent solutions.
- Strong experience with Kubernetes and containerised application platforms.
- Advanced Kubernetes administration and application delivery experience.
- Experience designing and operating highly available, distributed, service‑oriented architectures.
- Experience building and operating Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) and enabling self‑service engineering capabilities.
- Strong automation skills using Python, Shell scripting and related technologies.
- Deep expertise in CI/CD practices, software configuration management, automated testing, code quality analysis and deployment automation.
- Experience with tools including Jenkins, Ansible and Docker.
- Hands‑on experience with Infrastructure as Code frameworks including Terraform, AWS CloudFormation and Ansible.
- Strong understanding of cloud‑native architectures, DevOps principles, SRE practices and platform engineering.
- Strong understanding and hands‑on experience with GitOps methodologies, including declarative infrastructure, automated reconciliation, progressive delivery and version‑controlled operations.
- Hands‑on experience with Argo CD, Flux CD, Argo Rollouts or similar GitOps technologies.
- Hands‑on experience with modern observability platforms including Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch, Splunk and OpenTelemetry.
- Strong expertise in monitoring, logging, alerting, instrumentation and performance engineering for large‑scale distributed systems.
- Demonstrated ability to improve platform scalability, reliability, performance and resiliency.
- Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, including incident management, root cause analysis and troubleshooting under pressure.
- Demonstrated expertise supporting mission‑critical production environments with a focus on availability, reliability and operational excellence.
- Experience utilising AI‑assisted engineering tools such as GitHub Copilot, Amazon Q, ChatGPT Enterprise, Cursor or equivalent technologies.
- Exposure to AIOps and Agentic AI frameworks supporting operational intelligence, automation, incident response and workflow orchestration.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to influence both technical and executive stakeholders.
- Proven ability to collaborate effectively across diverse engineering teams and organisational boundaries.
Nice to have
- Experience applying AI and AIOps capabilities across software delivery, automation, monitoring and operational workflows.
- Familiarity with Agentic AI concepts, autonomous workflows and AI‑driven operational automation.
- Understanding of AI governance, security, compliance and responsible AI practices.
- Experience leveraging data analytics and visualisation tools to drive operational insights.
- Passion for continuous learning and adopting emerging technologies and best practices.
- Experience with resilience testing and chaos engineering.
This is a contract opportunity well‑suited for a seasoned professional with deep expertise in cloud platforms, infrastructure as code, automation, and deployment engineering within the financial services sector.