DevOps Engineer (National Security)

Location: Opportunities available across all compass points
Hybrid: Secure-site working patterns vary by programme
Salary: £60,000 – £90,000 depending on experience and SFIA grading
Clearance: Active DV / eDV clearance preferred

The Opportunity

We’re supporting a number of highly regarded SME and engineering-led consultancies operating across the UK National Security ecosystem, helping them grow their DevOps and platform engineering capability.

These organisations sit in an interesting space between the large primes and smaller niche operators. They combine modern engineering practices, collaborative culture and broad technical exposure with the opportunity to work on genuinely complex secure programmes.

Many of the engineers we place into these environments are coming from larger organisations where delivery has become overly process-heavy or where technical ownership is limited. In contrast, the teams we support tend to offer flatter structures, closer collaboration with engineering leadership and far greater visibility across the full delivery lifecycle.

The work typically spans cloud transformation, secure platform engineering and modern software delivery across a range of National Security and secure Government programmes.

For engineers looking for broader project exposure, stronger progression opportunities and the chance to have more influence over how platforms are built and evolved, these environments can offer a very different experience to more traditional consultancy structures.

The Role

As a DevOps Engineer you will help design, build and evolve secure cloud platforms and delivery environments supporting complex engineering programmes.

You will work closely with software engineers, architects and stakeholders to improve automation, scalability, reliability and secure delivery practices across a variety of systems and environments.

Typical responsibilities include:

• Designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitLab, Jenkins or similar tooling
• Automating infrastructure provisioning using Terraform and Infrastructure as Code approaches
• Deploying and managing containerised workloads using Docker and Kubernetes
• Supporting secure cloud platform delivery across AWS-based environments
• Developing automation and operational tooling using Python or Bash scripting
• Applying monitoring and observability practices using tools such as Prometheus and Grafana
• Supporting secure software delivery practices across cloud transformation and platform modernisation programmes
• Collaborating with multidisciplinary engineering teams to improve reliability, scalability and operational performance

The exact environment varies across programmes, but the common thread is modern engineering culture and exposure to a broad range of technologies and delivery challenges.

These roles are particularly well suited to engineers who enjoy operating across cloud infrastructure, automation and software delivery, rather than specialising in a single narrow platform or technology area.

The organisations we support place far more emphasis on adaptability, engineering mindset and collaborative behaviours than on matching every technology exactly.

Security Requirements

Due to the nature of the work, active DV / eDV clearance is preferred. Candidates should typically be sole UK nationals and eligible to work within secure National Security environments.

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