Senior/Lead DevOps

Contract Role

Hybrid - Can be on site at either Leeds or Newcastle

Rates between £450 to £540 pd Inside IR25

Valid SC

Role Overview

We are looking for an experienced Senior/Lead DevOps Engineer to support the deployment of SAS Viya on Microsoft Azure, with a particular focus on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Infrastructure-as-Code, networking, security, and CI/CD automation.

The successful candidate will work closely with the HCS team, SAS specialists, cloud/platform engineers, security teams, and other technical stakeholders to establish the Azure infrastructure and deployment capability required for the Proof of Concept (POC).

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the deployment and configuration of SAS Viya onto Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), working collaboratively with the HCS team.
• Design, build, and configure the Azure Landing Zone resources required to support the POC and SAS Viya workloads.
• Develop reusable and maintainable Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) using Terraform to automate Azure infrastructure provisioning.
• Configure Azure networking and connectivity, including VNets, subnets, NSGs, routing, DNS, Private Endpoints/Private Link, and associated security controls.
• Deploy, configure, and manage Kubernetes resources within AKS, including namespaces, deployments, services, storage, ingress controllers, certificates, secrets, and configuration.
• Implement secure management of application secrets and certificates, ideally integrating with Azure Key Vault.
• Establish and maintain automated CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure and application/platform deployments using tooling such as Azure DevOps or equivalent.
• Implement appropriate RBAC, identity, access controls, and security policies across Azure and Kubernetes environments.
• Troubleshoot deployment, networking, Kubernetes, security, and infrastructure issues across the end-to-end SAS Viya platform.
• Work with architecture, security, platform, and application teams to ensure solutions align with established cloud standards and security requirements.
• Produce technical documentation, deployment procedures, configuration guidance, and operational handover documentation.
• Provide technical leadership and support to other DevOps/platform engineers, driving DevOps and Infrastructure-as-Code best practices.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure in enterprise environments.
• Strong experience designing, deploying, and administering Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
• Advanced knowledge of Kubernetes, including deployments, services, ingress, secrets, certificates, persistent storage, RBAC, and troubleshooting.
• Strong practical experience with Terraform, including modular and reusable IaC patterns.
• Strong understanding of Azure networking, including VNets, subnets, NSGs, Private Endpoints, Private Link, DNS, and routing.
• Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines, preferably using Azure DevOps Pipelines.
• Experience with Azure identity and security services, including Microsoft Entra ID, Managed Identities, RBAC, and Azure Key Vault.
• Good understanding of containerisation technologies, particularly Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience working within secure enterprise or government cloud environments.
• Strong troubleshooting skills across cloud infrastructure, networking, Kubernetes, security, and deployment pipelines.

Highly Desirable

• Previous experience deploying or supporting SAS Viya, particularly SAS Viya 4 on Kubernetes.
• Experience deploying SAS Viya on Azure/AKS.
• Experience with Helm, Kustomize, GitOps, or similar Kubernetes deployment/configuration approaches.
• Experience implementing monitoring and logging using Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights, Prometheus, or Grafana.
• Experience working with private or restricted AKS architectures and enterprise landing zones.
• Understanding of Azure governance, including Azure Policy, tagging, resource management, and security controls.
• Previous experience delivering cloud solutions within UK Government, DWP, or similarly regulated environments.