Senior/Lead DevOps

Job Description \n Contract Role \n Hybrid - 2 days per month in London \n Rates between £450 to £540 pd Inside IR25 \n Valid SC \n Role Overview \n 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. \n 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). \n Key Responsibilities \n \n Lead the deployment and configuration of SAS Viya onto Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) , working collaboratively with the HCS team. \n Design, build, and configure the Azure Landing Zone resources required to support the POC and SAS Viya workloads. \n Develop reusable and maintainable Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) using Terraform to automate Azure infrastructure provisioning. \n Configure Azure networking and connectivity, including VNets, subnets, NSGs, routing, DNS, Private Endpoints/Private Link , and associated security controls. \n Deploy, configure, and manage Kubernetes resources within AKS, including namespaces, deployments, services, storage, ingress controllers, certificates, secrets, and configuration. \n Implement secure management of application secrets and certificates, ideally integrating with Azure Key Vault . \n Establish and maintain automated CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure and application/platform deployments using tooling such as Azure DevOps or equivalent. \n Implement appropriate RBAC, identity, access controls, and security policies across Azure and Kubernetes environments. \n Troubleshoot deployment, networking, Kubernetes, security, and infrastructure issues across the end-to-end SAS Viya platform. \n Work with architecture, security, platform, and application teams to ensure solutions align with established cloud standards and security requirements. \n Produce technical documentation, deployment procedures, configuration guidance, and operational handover documentation. \n Provide technical leadership and support to other DevOps/platform engineers, driving DevOps and Infrastructure-as-Code best practices. \n \n Essential Skills & Experience \n \n Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure in enterprise environments. \n Strong experience designing, deploying, and administering Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) . \n Advanced knowledge of Kubernetes , including deployments, services, ingress, secrets, certificates, persistent storage, RBAC, and troubleshooting. \n Strong practical experience with Terraform , including modular and reusable IaC patterns. \n Strong understanding of Azure networking , including VNets, subnets, NSGs, Private Endpoints, Private Link, DNS, and routing. \n Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines , preferably using Azure DevOps Pipelines . \n Experience with Azure identity and security services, including Microsoft Entra ID, Managed Identities, RBAC, and Azure Key Vault . \n Good understanding of containerisation technologies, particularly Docker and Kubernetes . \n Experience working within secure enterprise or government cloud environments. \n Strong troubleshooting skills across cloud infrastructure, networking, Kubernetes, security, and deployment pipelines. \n \n Highly Desirable \n \n Previous experience deploying or supporting SAS Viya , particularly SAS Viya 4 on Kubernetes. \n Experience deploying SAS Viya on Azure/AKS . \n Experience with Helm, Kustomize, GitOps , or similar Kubernetes deployment/configuration approaches. \n Experience implementing monitoring and logging using Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights, Prometheus, or Grafana . \n Experience working with private or restricted AKS architectures and enterprise landing zones. \n Understanding of Azure governance, including Azure Policy , tagging, resource management, and security controls. \n Previous experience delivering cloud solutions within UK Government, DWP, or similarly regulated environments . \n