Lead AWS DevOps Engineer (Contract - Outside IR35)

Day Rate: 500-600 Outside IR35

Location: Fully Remote - Bristol HQ

Length: 6 Months

A FTSE 100 FinTech, is accelerating its technology transformation with the creation of a dynamic Hybrid Cloud Team.

As a Senior AWS DevOps Engineer, you will be an influential Cloud Ambassador, proactively engaging with diverse teams across the business to champion the powerful services and robust support offered within the AWS portfolio. As a natural self-starter, you will play a crucial role in shaping the strategic roadmap for the team, driving the delivery of cutting-edge cloud services back to the business.

This is an exceptional opportunity to define a new operating model for cloud services. You will initially manage our existing on-premises infrastructure, actively participate in the seamless migration of services to AWS, and ultimately take ownership of the evolving AWS platform, ensuring its security and reliability.

What you'll be doing:

• Work collaboratively within an agile framework to deliver projects efficiently and with meticulous organization, embracing DevOps principles.
• Continuously seek and implement innovative solutions, driving improvements, enhancements, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) through extensive automation, particularly leveraging Terraform.
• Implement and manage comprehensive monitoring and alerting for our AWS and VMware environments, including compute, storage, and backup, participating in the on-call rota to ensure system health.
• Provide technical leadership and strategic direction for our VMware, compute, storage, monitoring, and backup technologies, aligning with overall business objectives.
• Proactively troubleshoot and resolve complex infrastructure issues across both on-premises and AWS environments, including network configurations and Firewall within AWS.
• Design, implement, and operate robust processes to guarantee optimal performance, capacity, and high availability, exceeding stringent business objectives.
• Integrate infrastructure management processes with CI/CD pipelines and DevSecOps practices to embed security and automation deeply into our infrastructure lifecycle.
• Contribute to the security posture of our AWS environment, implementing and adhering to AWS Security best practices and policies.
• Engage in occasional out-of-hours work and on-call support for critical updates, incidents, and fixes.
• Ensure thorough and up-to-date documentation is created and maintained post-project delivery to facilitate seamless BAU support.

As a Lead Engineer and subject matter expert, you will be responsible for:

• Creating and owning key components of the technology roadmap and infrastructure architecture strategy for our hybrid cloud environment.
• Serving as the primary technical escalation point for Incident, Major Incident, and Problem Management, providing expert guidance and resolution.
• The ongoing management and optimization of sophisticated monitoring and alerting services, providing actionable insights into system performance.
• Providing technical approval for Change Management procedures, conducting thorough impact analysis and ensuring governance over team-initiated changes.
• Creating and maintaining comprehensive technical IT documentation, including standards, policies, and robust processes.
• Guiding and Mentoring junior team members, fostering their growth and technical expertise within the AWS and DevOps domains.
• Driving adoption and best practices for containerization technologies, including Kubernetes, within our AWS environment.
• Championing the use of Unix/Linux operating systems, particularly REL OS, as a foundational element of our infrastructure.
• Implementing and managing configuration management tools such as Puppet to ensure consistency and compliance across our infrastructure.

About you:

• Extensive hands-on experience in an Enterprise environment supporting a wide range of AWS services (VPC, EC2, CloudWatch, EKS, RDS, S3, EBS) with a strong focus on security and scalability.
• Proven ability to support on-premises Compute Platforms, including VMware, Enterprise Storage, and Backup Solutions.
• Deep understanding and practical experience managing sophisticated system monitoring technologies.
• Demonstrable experience working within a strict change control environment.
• A strong understanding of risk management principles and their application in a cloud environment.
• A proactive, solution-focused mindset with a proven ability to leverage your experience to develop innovative solutions and effectively resolve intricate technical challenges.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills, with a track record of forging effective relationships at all levels and the ability to influence, negotiate, and navigate challenging conversations with confidence.
• Highly adaptable and able to work effectively both independently and collaboratively within a team, proactively managing competing workloads and prioritizing effectively to meet critical deadlines.
• A strong commitment to continuous learning and improvement, both for yourself and the wider team, actively promoting positive change and a culture of continuous improvement.