Lead Azure DevOps Engineer - SC Clearance Required

Job Title:

Lead Dev Ops Engineer (Azure)

Location:

Largely remote with travel to customer site two days a month Security Clearance:
Current UK SC Clearance required Rate:
Up to £650 - £700 a day Inside IR35 The Opportunity A chance to play a pivotal role in a major Defence / MOD / Government transformation programme. This is 3 month with strong possibility of extension until 2027. Inside IR35 contract pays up to £700 per day via an Umbrella company and places you at the centre of a complex, high-stakes delivery environment.

The Role The programme is progressing at pace, but now requires a Lead Dev Ops leader to ensure the engineering, automation, and platform delivery pipelines are cohesive, secure, and production-ready. Several critical capabilities remain to be architected and implemented. This role demands a Lead Dev Ops Engineer who has deep experience with Azure, extensive hands-on expertise with Terraform, and a track record of enabling high-performing Agile/Dev Sec Ops  teams.

You will take charge of defining Dev Ops patterns, shaping IaC best practice, refining CI/CD pipelines, and ensuring environments can be deployed, scaled, and operated with confidence. Main Responsibilities As part of a SAFe Agile Dev Sec Ops  Scrum team, you will:
Architect, build, and maintain Azure cloud environments using Terraform as the primary IaC tool. Create and maintain reusable Terraform modules, manage state securely, and enforce IaC governance and standards. Design and optimise CI/CD pipelines to support automated testing, secure deployments, and environment consistency. Drive Dev Ops best practices across the programme, enabling automation, observability, configuration management, and resilience. Implement secure-by-design principles across the platform, aligning with MOD/government security expectations.

Participate in Scrum ceremonies, collaborate on requirement shaping, and support risk identification and mitigation. Work closely with security, platform, software, and systems engineering teams to ensure integrated delivery. Support cross-training initiatives to strengthen Dev Sec Ops  capability across the wider programme.

The Person UK Citizen with current UK SC Clearance. Senior-level Lead Dev Ops Engineer with extensive experience in large-scale Azure environments. Expert-level hands-on experience with Terraform, including: module design and reusable patterns state management and workspace strategy environment automation and orchestration enforcing IaC standards across teams Strong background in CI/CD engineering with tools such as Git Hub Actions, Azure Dev Ops, or similar.

Solid understanding of Agile/Dev Sec Ops  principles and the broader software delivery lifecycle. Proficient with supporting tools such as Git Hub, Sonar Qube, Robot, Test Rail, Ansible, and Unix Bash scripting. Able to analyse complex systems, coordinate installations or upgrades, and plan platform transitions. Strong communicator capable of working with cross-functional teams, customers, Scrum Masters, and security stakeholders. Broad hands-on knowledge of Azure services spanning compute, networking, identity, security, logging, and monitoring.