DevOps Engineer

DevOps Engineer
Outside IR35
6 months initially - Likely extension
Hybrid - 3/4 days Portsmouth
£480 p/d

SR2 is supporting a high-priority programme seeking an experienced DevOps Engineer to join a secure engineering environment. This role is suited to someone with deep Kubernetes expertise, strong CI/CD capability, and proven experience delivering within security-sensitive settings.

The Role
You'll be Embedded within a multidisciplinary engineering team responsible for designing, deploying, and operating containerised platforms in highly regulated environments. The work demands strong hands-on capability across Kubernetes, secure DevOps tooling, and automation alongside the ability to collaborate across organisational boundaries and influence technical direction.

This role requires an active SC clearance.

Essential Skills & Experience
  • Active SC clearance (required pre-start).
  • Kubernetes expertise (3+ years) - design, deployment and operations at scale.
  • Hands-on experience with VMware Tanzu or Red Hat OpenShift.
  • Strong proficiency in CI/CD tooling: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, ArgoCD, Tekton.
  • Infrastructure-as-Code: Terraform, Helm, Ansible.
  • Scripting: Bash and Python.
  • Experience working in air-gapped environments and with secure supply-chain practices
  • Proven ability to work across complex organisational structures and external teams.

Desirable Skills & Experience
  • Exposure to multiple Kubernetes distributions.
  • Experience with Azure or AWS in regulated environments.
  • Strong GitOps capability (ArgoCD, Flux).
  • Observability tooling: Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, ELK/EFK.
  • Service mesh technologies: Istio, Linkerd.
  • Experience with containerised services: Postgres, Redis, Kafka, Keycloak.

Soft Skills
  • Strong communication and stakeholder-engagement capability.
  • Ability to influence without authority and work seamlessly across team boundaries.
  • Pragmatic problem-solver with both tactical and strategic awareness.
  • Comfortable operating in fast-paced, evolving, and highly regulated environments.

Job Details

Company
SR2 - Socially Responsible Recruitment
Location
Portsmouth, Hampshire, United Kingdom PO1 1
Employment Type
Contract
Salary
GBP 480 Daily
Posted