Lead DevOps

Methods is a £100M+ IT Services Consultancy who has partnered with a range of central government departments and agencies to transform the way the public sector operates in the UK. Established over 30 years ago and UK-based, we apply our skills in transformation, delivery, and collaboration from across the Methods Group, to create end-to-end business and technical solutions that are people-centred, safe, and designed for the future.
Our human touch sets us apart from other consultancies, system integrators and software houses - with people, technology, and data at the heart of who we are, we believe in creating value and sustainability through everything we do for our clients, staff, communities, and the planet.
We support our clients in the success of their projects while working collaboratively to share skill sets and solve problems. At Methods we have fun while working hard; we are not afraid of making mistakes and learning from them.
Methods was acquired by the Alten Group in early 2022.
The role is heavily AWS platform engineering focused. While Azure and DevSecOps experience are valuable, the day-to-day work is centred on designing, maintaining and improving AWS-hosted Identity platforms running on Kubernetes and ECS.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will be expected to lead by example, mentor engineers, influence technical decisions and own services throughout their lifecycle.
Requirements
Core Technical Skills
AWS
Expected to have strong hands-on experience across AWS services including:
ECS
EKS
EC2
IAM
Auto Scaling Groups
KMS
CloudHSM
Secrets Manager
Systems Manager Parameter Store
CloudWatch
This is an engineering role rather than an infrastructure administration role.
Infrastructure as Code
Strong Terraform experience is expected.
This includes:
Writing production-quality Terraform
Creating and maintaining reusable Terraform modules
Managing multiple environments using Terraform Workspaces
Reviewing and improving existing modules
Following engineering standards and code review practices
Kubernetes
A high level of Kubernetes knowledge is expected.
Daily work includes:
Deploying and operating applications on Amazon EKS
Troubleshooting workloads
Working with Deployments, Services, Ingress, ConfigMaps and Secrets
Understanding RBAC
Resource requests and limits
Horizontal Pod Autoscaling
Network Policies
Kubernetes troubleshooting
Helm
Helm is used extensively.
You will be expected to:
Write Helm charts
Maintain existing charts
Build reusable templates
Manage values across environments
Debug Helm deployments
This is a core skill for the role.
ECS
A significant amount of the estate still runs on ECS.
Expected knowledge includes:
ECS Services
Task Definitions
Auto Scaling Groups
Capacity Providers
Deployment strategies
Operational troubleshooting
The team owns the ECS platform.
Docker
Almost every application is containerised.
Expected experience:
Building images
Writing Dockerfiles
Multi-stage builds
Image optimisation
Container troubleshooting
GitLab & CI/CD
All source code is hosted in GitLab.
CI/CD is implemented using GitLab CI.
Expected experience includes:
Writing GitLab CI pipelines
Maintaining reusable pipeline fragments and templates
Building and maintaining reusable CI/CD components
Managing multi-stage deployment pipelines across Development, Test, Stage and Production
Pipeline troubleshooting
Secure secret handling
Build and deployment automation
Testing & Quality Engineering
Testing is considered part of delivering a feature, not an optional activity.
Lead Engineers are expected to understand how to test infrastructure, platform code and applications, and to integrate those tests into automated delivery pipelines.
Expected experience includes:
Writing and maintaining Terraform Tests
Writing and maintaining Go-based tests for Helm charts where appropriate
Writing or extending application tests (for example Node.js unit or integration tests)
Writing automated tests for Python tooling and applications using frameworks such as pytest
Understanding test coverage and identifying gaps
Integrating automated tests into GitLab CI pipelines
Troubleshooting failing automated tests
Building reusable testing stages within GitLab CI templates
Running tests locally and within CI/CD pipelines
Performance, load and stress testing using JMeter and k6
Integrating performance testing into GitLab CI pipelines where appropriate
Analysing performance test results and identifying bottlenecks
Producing repeatable automated validation rather than relying on manual testing
Testing is expected to form part of the Definition of Done.
Identity & Security
As an Identity programme, understanding authentication is important.
Expected knowledge includes:
OAuth 2.0 flows
OpenID Connect (OIDC)
JWTs
API authentication
IAM
Kubernetes RBAC
Knowledge of identity platforms and authentication patterns is highly desirable.
API Gateway
The platform makes extensive use of Kong API Gateway.
Useful experience includes:
Routing
Authentication plugins
OIDC integration
Rate limiting
Upstream configuration
Troubleshooting gateway behaviour
Service Mesh
Applications running on EKS use Istio.
Expected knowledge includes:
Virtual Services
Destination Rules
Gateways
mTLS
Traffic routing
Basic troubleshooting
Monitoring & Observability
Current monitoring stack:
Prometheus
Grafana
The organisation is introducing Dynatrace, either alongside or as a future replacement.
Expected experience includes:
Creating dashboards
Alerting
Metrics
Performance troubleshooting
Root cause analysis
Monitoring production services
Technical Documentation
Strong technical documentation is an expected part of the role.
You will be expected to:
Produce clear Spike documentation covering the problem, investigation, options considered, recommendation and outcome
Write implementation documentation for new features and architectural changes
Maintain comprehensive README files for repositories, Terraform modules and Helm charts
Produce operational runbooks
Create support documentation
Produce handover documentation where appropriate
Record technical decisions and their reasoning
Communicate ideas and proposals in a structured way
Write high-quality Jira stories, technical tasks and Spike tickets with clear acceptance criteria, implementation detail and expected outcomes
Good written communication is considered a core engineering skill.
Technical Ownership
Lead Engineers are expected to take ownership of services rather than simply deliver individual pieces of work.
This includes:
Owning services throughout their lifecycle, from design through to production support
Understanding the wider platform and the impact of technical decisions
Driving work forward with minimal supervision
Identifying technical debt and proposing practical improvements
Challenging designs where there are operational, security, resilience or scalability concerns
Considering operational support as part of every solution
Designing solutions that are maintainable by the wider engineering team
Working across multiple repositories and services
Being accountable for the quality of technical delivery
Supporting incident investigation and root cause analysis through to completion
Agile Delivery & Ways of Working
The team follows Agile delivery practices and Lead Engineers are expected to actively contribute to both technical delivery and the running of the team.
Expected experience includes:
Working effectively within Agile delivery teams
Participating in Sprint Planning, Sprint Reviews, Retrospectives and Daily Stand-ups
Leading Agile ceremonies when required, with all engineers taking turns facilitating stand-ups, retrospectives and sprint planning
Breaking down technical work into deliverable stories and tasks
Writing high-quality Jira stories, technical tasks and Spike investigations
Producing clear acceptance criteria and technical implementation plans
Contributing to backlog refinement by helping define technical requirements and identify dependencies
Providing

Work arrangement
No