DevOps Engineer

Job Title: DevOps / Tech Release Engineer Location: Watford, UK (Hybrid – 3 days onsite) Contract Duration: 6 Months Mandatory Skills AWS Cloud Engineering DevOps & Release Engineering CI/CD (GitHub Actions) Kubernetes & Docker Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Release & Cutover Management Role Overview We are looking for an experienced DevOps / Technical Release Engineer to manage and coordinate application releases, production deployments, and live cutovers across cloud environments. The ideal candidate should have strong expertise in AWS, CI/CD automation, Kubernetes, deployment strategies, rollback planning, and technical leadership during production releases. Key Responsibilities Release & Cutover Management Manage infrastructure state changes during live production cutovers. Ensure staging, pre-production, and production environments remain synchronized. Coordinate software releases, dependencies, patches, and deployment schedules. Detect and resolve environment drift before production deployment. Execute rollback procedures safely while protecting production data. Maintain cutover risk registers and contingency plans. Command Centre & Stakeholder Management Lead the technical Command Centre during live production releases. Coordinate engineers, DBAs, infrastructure teams, and support teams. Act as the primary communication point for technical and business stakeholders. Translate technical issues into business impact updates. Cloud & Deployment Manage deployments across AWS cloud environments. Work with load balancers, Route 53, Cloudflare, and CDN configurations. Perform deployment validation using automated smoke tests and health checks. Partner with Data Engineers for schema migrations and data validation. DevOps & Automation Automate manual deployment activities using CI/CD pipelines. Implement Infrastructure as Code and environment promotion strategies. Manage Kubernetes/Docker deployments. Support Helm Charts or Kustomize for multi-environment deployments. Follow Git branching strategies (GitFlow, Trunk-Based Development, Feature Branching). Required Skills Cloud & Infrastructure AWS (Mandatory) Azure or GCP knowledge is beneficial Route53 Cloudflare Load Balancers CDN DevOps GitHub Actions Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/CloudFormation preferred) CI/CD Automation Release Engineering Environment Management Containers Kubernetes (K8s) Docker Helm Kustomize Databases SQL / NoSQL Liquibase Flyway Data Replication & Migration Programming Experience in one or more of: Python JavaScript TypeScript Java Groovy C++ Version Control Git GitFlow Trunk-Based Development Feature Branching Required Experience Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, IT, or related field. 3–5+ years of experience in DevOps, Platform Engineering, or Technical Release Engineering. Experience managing production deployments and live cutovers. Strong understanding of monolithic, microservices, and distributed architectures. Knowledge of zero-downtime deployment strategies and rollback planning. Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.