DevOps Engineer (Defence AI Tech)

DevOps Engineer – High-Growth Defence AI Tech – London – £130,000 + Equity

A well-funded, mission-driven AI startup is redefining how autonomous systems and robotics are deployed at scale. Built by exceptional engineers who thrive on hard, high-impact problems — this is a place where your work genuinely matters, and where autonomy is given from day one, not earned after years of ladder-climbing.

This is a platform engineering role with real ownership. You'll design and maintain the standardised, automated route from local code to production - treating infrastructure as a product and internal developers as your primary customers.

What You'll Do

• Own the internal developer platform end-to-end - identifying bottlenecks in the delivery lifecycle and building automated solutions to eliminate them
• Architect standardised deployment patterns with security, compliance, and observability baked in from the start
• Drive GitOps adoption to ensure declarative, reproducible, and fully audited state management across all environments
• Manage self-hosted engineering tooling (e.g. GitLab) for high availability and seamless ecosystem integration
• Build custom tooling in Python, Go, or Bash to unify disparate systems into a cohesive, self-service platform

What They're Looking For

• 3+ years building or scaling internal developer platforms or sophisticated CI/CD ecosystems
• Expert-level IaC proficiency - Terraform, OpenTofu, or Pulumi
• Strong Kubernetes and container orchestration experience, with a focus on abstracting complexity for end-users
• Deep understanding of cloud-native primitives across compute, networking, and storage
• Scripting or systems programming competency in Python, Go, or Bash

What They Offer

• Highly competitive salary + equity in a well-funded, high-growth startup at a pivotal moment
• True ownership from day one - no corporate hierarchy, no approval theatre
• Work on some of the most technically challenging and consequential infrastructure problems in the AI space
• A small team of elite engineers where your impact is visible, immediate, and valued