# Lead DevOps Engineer

**Company:** [Elliptic](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/elliptic)
**Location:** London, United Kingdom
**Role:** DevOps / SRE
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** Kubernetes, Amazon Eks, Terraform, AWS, GCP, GitOps, Fluxcd, Argo CD, Istio, Linkerd, Helm, Kyverno, Open Policy Agent, Hashicorp Vault, OpenTelemetry
**Posted:** 2026-08-05

> Leads and mentors a DevOps team while remaining hands-on in building secure, multi-region Kubernetes platforms, cloud infrastructure, GitOps delivery, and reliability practices. The role also supports AI platform infrastructure and requires strong expertise in Kubernetes, Terraform, security, observability, and team leadership.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Own the DevOps and Platform roadmap, including Kubernetes platform evolution, application packaging, migration to EKS, and enabling reliable production delivery.
- Lead by doing: engineer, review, and enhance Kubernetes and CNCF-aligned infrastructure while setting technical standards.
- Architect multi-cluster, multi-region environments using Istio, Linkerd, Cluster API, and Kyverno.
- Build progressive delivery frameworks with Flux and Flagger for GitOps-driven canary and automated releases.
- Implement Kubernetes-native cloud provisioning with Crossplane and ACK.
- Define and enforce Zero Trust architecture with Vault, Boundary, service identity, and mTLS-secured service meshes.
- Engineer policy-driven automation and compliance using OPA, Kyverno, and secure supply-chain configurations.
- Establish Infrastructure-as-Code and GitOps standards with automated testing for infrastructure changes.
- Prototype agentic infrastructure components, including deployment and observability platforms in service meshes.
- Design AI gateways and registries for traffic and event routing between microservices and autonomous agents via CNCF Gateway APIs.
- Champion DevSecOps maturity through SAST, DAST, chaos engineering, and error-budget monitoring.
- Collaborate with Security, Data, and AI teams on DevOps and AI platform architectures and regulatory compliance.
- Stay current with CNCF and AI ecosystem innovations, including eBPF observability and agent-aware orchestration.
- Lead and mentor DevOps engineers while remaining hands-on with technical work.

## Requirements
- Experience leading or mentoring engineering teams, setting direction, and contributing hands-on.
- Strong Kubernetes expertise, including cluster lifecycle management, API extensions, Operators, Helm, and the CNCF ecosystem.
- Experience with multi-cluster, multi-region Kubernetes platforms and service meshes such as Istio, Consul, or Linkerd.
- Experience writing modular Terraform Infrastructure-as-Code on AWS or GCP, integrating GitOps and automated testing such as Terratest or InSpec.
- Experience implementing GitOps pipelines with ArgoCD or FluxCD for progressive delivery, drift correction, and multi-environment releases.
- Experience building containerized, serverless, or event-driven systems with observability using Datadog, Splunk, or OpenTelemetry.
- Experience with Vault-based secret management, least-privilege access, and compliance automation.
- Experience designing CI/CD workflows with SAST, DAST, policy enforcement, and performance telemetry.
- Experience improving reliability and resilience through SLOs, error budgets, and chaos engineering.
- Passion for secure, scalable, and reliable systems and for helping others build them.
- Strong customer and product mindset, ownership, thoughtful decision-making, collaboration, and commitment to inclusive team building.

## Nice to Have
- Leadership of platform modernization or reliability initiatives in scale-up or regulated environments.
- Operator development, CRD automation, eBPF, or Cilium experience.
- Policy-as-code expertise with OPA or Kyverno in secure supply-chain or CSPM frameworks.
- Experience with AI-driven internal developer platforms or predictive observability using AI or LLMs.
- Experience designing agentic or autonomous infrastructure with AI-agent observability.
- Familiarity with MCP and A2A orchestration patterns in Kubernetes service-mesh environments.
- Understanding of Agent Gateways and Registries connecting microservices and AI agents.
- Experience with secure containers, sandboxing, or confidential computing for regulated workloads.
- Experience with Spark, Databricks, or Data Mesh.
- Programming experience in Go, Python, or TypeScript.
- Contributions to open-source or CNCF community projects.

## Compensation and Benefits
- Hybrid working, with the option to work from almost anywhere for up to 90 days per year.
- £500 remote-working budget for home-office setup.
- $1,000 Learning & Development budget.
- 25 days of annual leave plus bank holidays.
- Additional day off for your birthday.
- Enhanced parental leave, including 16 weeks of fully paid leave for eligible employees.
- Private health insurance through Vitality.
- Spill Mental Health Support.
- Life assurance covering four times salary for beneficiaries.
- Cycle to Work Scheme.

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