Director of DevOps

Principal / Director – DevOps / Engineering Infrastructure – UK / Europe (Flexible / Hybrid) – £150,000 – £190,000 base + 30% bonus

My client’s advanced engineering organisation is looking to add a Principal / Director – DevOps / Engineering Infrastructure to support the scaling and modernisation of engineering productivity, automation, and infrastructure across complex software and hardware development environments.

This role is focused on building scalable engineering systems, improving developer productivity, modernising CI/CD and validation workflows, and enabling globally distributed engineering teams working across next-generation compute, graphics, AI, and embedded platform technologies.

This is not a generic enterprise IT or cloud operations role.

You will operate at the intersection of engineering infrastructure, developer enablement, automation, and platform engineering — helping create scalable, reliable, and highly automated environments supporting complex R&D and product engineering organisations.

Principal / Director – DevOps / Engineering Infrastructure Role & Responsibilities:

• Define and drive engineering infrastructure and DevOps strategy across the organisation

• Improve developer productivity, engineering velocity, and automation maturity

• Lead CI/CD, build, validation, and release infrastructure initiatives across large-scale engineering environments

• Support scalable tooling and infrastructure for globally distributed software and hardware engineering teams

• Drive modern platform engineering and developer enablement practices

• Collaborate with software, architecture, platform, verification, and infrastructure teams

• Support AI-assisted engineering workflows, observability, and engineering automation initiatives

• Improve infrastructure scalability, reliability, release quality, and operational efficiency

• Help establish best practices around engineering systems, automation, platform operations, and infrastructure governance

Principal / Director – DevOps / Engineering Infrastructure Essential Skills:

• Strong experience across DevOps, Platform Engineering, Engineering Infrastructure, or Developer Enablement

• Proven experience improving engineering productivity and CI/CD maturity within complex engineering organisations

• Strong experience with Kubernetes, Infrastructure-as-Code, CI/CD systems, automation frameworks, and Linux-based environments

• Experience supporting large-scale software or product-engineering teams

• Strong understanding of scalable build, test, integration, and deployment systems

• Experience across observability, monitoring, automation, and operational excellence practices

• Ability to operate at both strategic and hands-on technical levels

• Strong communication and stakeholder management capability across distributed/global teams

• Semiconductor, AI, embedded systems, HPC, or complex R&D environment experience is highly desirable

What This Isn’t

• Not a generic enterprise IT operations role

• Not purely cloud migration or customer platform support

• Not isolated infrastructure administration — this is focused on engineering enablement, developer productivity, and scalable R&D infrastructure

Why This Role

• Ownership of a critical and growing engineering capability within the organisation

• Opportunity to modernise engineering infrastructure at scale

• Direct influence on developer productivity, automation, and engineering velocity

• Highly technical environment with real organisational impact

• Opportunity to shape the future of engineering systems supporting advanced compute, graphics, AI, and embedded platform development

Salary and Package:

• £150,000 – £190,000 base salary (depending on level and experience)

• 30% bonus

• Total compensation: £195,000 – £247,000+

• Flexible / hybrid working model

• Pension

• Private medical

• Life assurance

• Income protection

• Training and development

My client can offer a 3-stage process consisting of a 1st stage Video Call, 2nd Stage Video Call, and a 3rd Stage on-site Interview (meet the team and site tour). This process can be completed within 2–3 weeks (based on availability).