Senior DevOps / Automation Engineer

Salary: £? - ? per year Requirements: • Strong practical experience developing production-quality Python, including modular design, error handling, logging, and testing. • Enterprise-scale automation experience with Ansible Automation Platform (AAP). • Jenkins pipeline development, including Groovy, and GitHub-based CI/CD workflows. • PostgreSQL schema design, query optimisation, and operational data management. • Ability to create structured, maintainable automation definitions using YAML. • Experience with Git version control, branching, code reviews, and release practices. • Grafana dashboard development and metrics interpretation. • HashiCorp Vault integration and secrets-management automation. • Experience with Nexus Repository or an equivalent artefact repository. • Comfortable engineering automation for complex enterprise environments, with a focus on reliability, security, maintainability, and operational resilience. • Structured, systems-oriented approach to enterprise automation; able to design for failure recovery, restartability, observability, and auditability. • Ability to develop reusable automation patterns, balance simplicity with production-grade robustness, collaborate across technical and governance teams, and apply standards pragmatically. • Desirable: Experience with IBM Z and z/OS concepts, including JCL and batch scheduling; z/OSMF or Zowe CLI; enterprise workload scheduling, including IWS patterns; configuration drift management and automated remediation; API integration and infrastructure-as-code governance; observability exporters and metrics pipelines; or regulated financial services environments. Responsibilities: • Design and develop production-quality automation using Python and YAML. • Build and maintain Ansible playbooks using Ansible Automation Platform (AAP). • Engineer idempotent, restartable, and state-aware workflows with robust error handling, retry logic, and operational safeguards. • Integrate automation across distributed and IBM Z environments, including z/OS job execution where relevant. • Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines using GitHub and Jenkins, including Groovy-based pipeline development. • Embed automated compliance checks, quality gates, and verification controls in delivery workflows. • Integrate artefact management through Nexus Repository. • Support Git workflows, branching strategies, pull requests, code reviews, and release management. • Develop Grafana dashboards and telemetry pipelines, and integrate logging and metrics with enterprise observability platforms such as Splunk. • Build dashboards for compliance monitoring and configuration drift detection, and produce structured reporting for operational governance and audit requirements. • Design PostgreSQL schemas for automation state, job history, and operational reporting; implement execution-state tracking, retention, and audit evidence capture. • Optimise queries and data handling to improve reliability and operational performance. • Implement secure secrets management using HashiCorp Vault and integrate Vault with CI/CD pipelines and AAP workflows. • Apply least-privilege principles and secure credential lifecycle management. • Embed compliance verification and evidence capture into automated workflows; support configuration drift detection, remediation, and enterprise automation standards. • Maintain documentation suitable for risk, audit, and regulatory stakeholders. • Collaborate with infrastructure, mainframe, DevOps, risk, and audit teams to deliver automation across distributed teams and global environments. Technologies: • API • Ansible • CI/CD • DevOps • Git • GitHub • Grafana • Groovy • IBM • Support • JCL • Jenkins • Nexus • PostgreSQL • Python • Security • Splunk More: We are seeking a Senior DevOps / Automation Engineer for a strategic automation and DevOps modernisation programme spanning IBM Z mainframe and distributed platforms. This engineering-focused contract role is remote and runs for six months, with a rate of £65–£70 per hour, Inside IR35. You will work across Python, Ansible Automation Platform, Jenkins, GitHub, PostgreSQL, HashiCorp Vault, and enterprise observability tooling to help establish scalable, secure, auditable, and reusable automation services across global platforms. last updated 42 week of 2026