Job Title: Senior DevOps Engineer (AWS)
Reports to: Managing Director: UK, Ireland and Middle East
Role overview
DVT is one of the top software development companies on the continent. Our software engineers are consulting on cutting edge applications at top companies in South Africa, as well as consulting globally. You will have the opportunity to work alongside some of the most established developers in the country and globally with the latest technologies.
DVT is committed to continuously training our staff and we are very proud of our culture of learning, internal speaking and training at a variety of sponsored technical events across the AWS ecosystem.
We are looking for a Senior DevOps Engineer to join our cloud team. As a Senior DevOps Engineer, you will play a crucial role in developing and maintaining cloud infrastructure, automating processes, and supporting our software development teams across multiple client engagements.
You will work closely with cross-functional teams to ensure the smooth integration and deployment of applications, improve efficiency through automation, and implement best practices for continuous integration and delivery.
This is a client-facing consulting role where you will engage directly with enterprise clients across financial services, telecommunications, government, and other sectors. You will provide technical leadership, mentor junior engineers, and drive the adoption of DevOps best practices. The ideal candidate is a problem solver with a strong technical background, excellent communication skills, and a passion for driving innovation in cloud infrastructure.
Duties and Responsibilities
The Senior DevOps Engineer's responsibilities include management of AWS cloud infrastructure for DVT clients and internal projects, with a focus on automation, scalability, and operational excellence.
Infrastructure and Automation
- Design, implement, and maintain scalable CI/CD pipelines using for example GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline, or similar tools to support automated testing, deployment, and infrastructure provisioning
- Migrate and manage infrastructure-as-code using Terraform, CloudFormation or similar tools, including remote state management, modular refactoring, and multi-environment deployments
- Develop and maintain ephemeral feature environments for isolated testing and validation using Terraform workspaces or Terragrunt
- Automate environment provisioning, routing (Route53, ALB/NLB), and teardown processes to support dynamic development workflows
- Help design and implement AWS networking solutions including VPC architecture, security groups, NACLs, Transit Gateway, and hybrid connectivity
Deployment and operations
- Collaborate with software engineering teams to enable seamless integration and deployment of backend services, such as JAVA, .NET or Python, Node.js, and containerized applications
- Implement blue/green or canary deployment strategies using AWS services, ensuring safe and traceable rollouts with automated rollback capabilities
- Integrate unit and functional / API testing frameworks (e.g. pytest, Postman / Newman, LocalStack) into the CI pipeline to ensure code quality and deployment readiness
- Establish and enforce conventions for test execution, container image tagging, versioning strategies, and reusable CI/CD components across repositories
- Manage production deployments, change windows, and release coordination across development, staging, and production environments
Monitoring, security and compliance
- Implement comprehensive monitoring, logging, and observability solutions such as CloudWatch, X-Ray, and third-party APM tools
- Monitor and optimize system performance, deployment efficiency, resource utilization, and cloud costs across all environments
- Implement and maintain security best practices including WAF (well-architecture framework and OWASP), secrets management (AWS Secrets Manager, Parameter Store), IAM policies, security scanning (SAST / DAST), and compliance controls
- Configure alerting and incident response workflows, and lead post-incident reviews
- Ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations (ISO 27001, SOC2, POPIA) relevant to client requirements
Leadership & client engagement
- Provide technical leadership and mentorship to junior DevOps engineers and development teams
- Engage directly with clients to understand requirements, provide technical advisory, and present solutions to stakeholders
- Participate in architectural reviews, retrospectives, and planning sessions to continuously improve deployment processes and tooling
- Conduct training sessions and create documentation to establish DevOps best practices across teams and clients
- Contribute to pre-sales activities including solution design, effort estimation, and technical proposals
- Attend and partake in a minimum of 90% of relevant official DVT events (Staff Events, Department events etc.)
Requirement experience and skills
The successful candidate will have:
- 7+ years of experience in Cloud DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, or related roles, with a strong focus on CI/CD and infrastructure automation
- Deep proficiency in AWS services including but not limited to: EC2, ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, DynamoDB, RDS, VPC, Route53, CloudFront, IAM (Identity Center), CloudWatch, and X-Ray
- Expert-level knowledge of Infrastructure-as-Code tools (Terraform required, CloudFormation beneficial) including remote state management, module development, and multi-environment strategies
- Strong experience with CI/CD platforms (GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline, GitLab CI, or Jenkins)
- Advanced scripting skills in Bash or Python for automation and tooling development
- Extensive experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes/EKS, Helm beneficial)
- Proven experience with monitoring and observability tools (CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or similar APM solutions)
- Strong understanding of AWS networking concepts including VPC design, security groups, load balancers, DNS, and hybrid connectivity
- Experience with secrets management solutions (AWS Secrets Manager, Parameter Store, HashiCorp Vault)
- Knowledge of DevSecOps practices and tools including security scanning (SCA, SAST, DAST), vulnerability management, and compliance automation
- Familiarity with testing frameworks and tools (pytest, Postman / Newman, LocalStack, or similar)
- Understanding of configuration management and deployment strategies (blue/green, canary, rolling deployments)
- Experience with AWS cost optimization, tagging strategies, and FinOps practices
- Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills with a proactive approach to problem-solving
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills in cross-functional and client-facing environments
- Demonstrated ability to mentor junior engineers and lead technical initiatives
- Understanding of Agile methodologies, DevOps culture, and SRE principles
- Experience working in consulting or professional services environments with multiple concurrent client engagements
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- AWS certifications (Solutions Architect - Professional, DevOps Engineer - Professional, Security - Specialty)
- Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
- Experience with multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP) or hybrid cloud architectures
- Experience in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, government sectors)
- Knowledge of GitOps practices and tools (ArgoCD, Flux)
- Experience with serverless architectures and event-driven design patterns
- Familiarity with disaster recovery planning, backup strategies, and multi-region deployments
- Experience with configuration management tools (Ansible, Chef, Puppet)
- Public speaking experience or contributions to open source projects
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MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
- Matric (Grade 12) certificate
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience)
- At least one relevant professional certification (AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Certified Kubernetes Administrator, or equivalent)
- South African work authorization or valid work permit
- Willingness to participate in on-call rotation for production support (if required by client engagements)
- Ability to travel occasionally for client meetings or site visits (when required)