Head of DevOps

Global DevOps Head

Location: Remote (UK / Europe)

Reports to: VP of Quality & DevOps

Salary: Up to £130,000

Overview

We are seeking an experienced Global DevOps Head to establish and scale a global DevOps capability across a multi-market enterprise environment. This role requires a senior leader who can drive transformation, influence across all levels, and embed automation, reliability, and continuous improvement across distributed global teams.

Key Responsibilities

Operating Model & Leadership

• Define and implement a unified global DevOps operating model with clear governance and standards
• Lead organisation-wide DevOps transformation and change management initiatives
• Partner with TechOps to define clear operational boundaries across teams
• Align engineering and product teams around consistent DevOps practices

Strategy & Implementation

• Deliver end-to-end DevOps strategy covering IaC, CI/CD, automation, monitoring, and SRE practices
• Drive infrastructure as code adoption across all environments
• Embed SRE principles into engineering delivery
• Standardise engineering practices across regions

Automation & Delivery

• Identify and implement automation opportunities across deployment and operations
• Reduce manual intervention in release and configuration processes
• Design scalable CI/CD pipelines that improve speed and quality

Observability & Reliability

• Lead enterprise adoption of Datadog as the observability platform
• Define monitoring, alerting, and incident response frameworks
• Improve system reliability, uptime, and incident response times

Metrics & Continuous Improvement

• Establish and track DORA metrics across engineering teams
• Drive continuous improvement in delivery and operational performance
• Build dashboards for DevOps visibility and reporting

Cloud Cost Management

• Optimise Azure usage and reduce cloud spend through efficient resource management
• Improve cost transparency and governance across platforms

Required Experience & Skills

• 8+ years in DevOps, platform engineering, or infrastructure leadership roles
• Proven success delivering DevOps transformation in enterprise environments
• Advanced Azure DevOps experience (pipelines, governance, dashboards, integrations)
• Expert knowledge of Datadog (APM, logging, tracing, monitoring, alerting)
• Strong experience with Terraform, ARM templates, and Bicep
• Deep understanding of CI/CD and deployment strategies
• Proficiency in PowerShell, Python, or Bash
• Strong understanding of SRE principles

Leadership Skills

• Strong influence across complex, matrix organisations
• Excellent executive-level communication skills
• Experience working across global teams and cultures
• Ability to manage competing priorities with strategic focus

Preferred Skills

• Azure DevOps Expert or Azure Solutions Architect certifications
• Datadog certifications
• Experience with Agile/SAFe delivery at scale
• Familiarity with ITIL and change management frameworks
• Exposure to AIOps practices