DevOps Engineer
Outside IR35
6 months initally - 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.

• 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.

• 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.