DevOps Manager - ESK Recruitment

The DevOps Manager for the Internal Applications team is responsible for leading a multidisciplinary group of Software Developers and DevOps Engineers focused on building, evolving, and operating internal software products.

This role is not only about managing delivery or coordinating engineering work. It is about creating the right environment for the team to succeed, helping people grow, improving engineering practices, and ensuring that internal applications deliver real value to the business.

The successful candidate will be accountable for leading a team with a wide variety of skills and experience levels, setting clear priorities, supporting product and technical decisions, and driving a pragmatic, outcome-oriented engineering culture.

Working across software development, DevOps, infrastructure, and internal stakeholders, the DevOps Manager will provide direction, structure, guidance, and support. They will help ensure that our applications, platforms, delivery practices, and operational processes are reliable, maintainable, scalable, and aligned with business needs.

The role requires someone who can combine technical understanding, product thinking, and people leadership . This person should be able to understand business problems, translate them into clear priorities, guide the team through technical complexity, and make balanced decisions across quality, speed, scope, cost, and long-term maintainability.

The DevOps Manager is expected to be autonomous, organized, pragmatic, people-oriented, and accountable for improving both the team and the products they own.

What you'll do

Lead, support, and develop a team of Software Developers and DevOps Engineers with different levels of seniority, skills, and experience.

Own the delivery, evolution, and operational quality of internal applications and services.

Define clear team goals, priorities, delivery plans, and success criteria.

Work closely with stakeholders to understand business needs, negotiate priorities, manage expectations, and translate requirements into actionable plans.

Contribute to product direction and roadmap definition for internal applications, ensuring the team focuses on valuable, practical, and sustainable solutions.

Guide technical and architectural decisions, helping the team balance quality, scalability, maintainability, delivery speed, and business impact.

Promote strong software engineering practices, including clean code, automated testing, code reviews, documentation, observability, and maintainability.

Drive the adoption and continuous improvement of DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and release processes.

Support the team in designing, developing, deploying, and operating applications using technologies such as Python, Django, Node.js , React, PostgreSQL, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenStack, GitLab, and Nexus .

Ensure that applications and platforms are built with reliability, security, scalability, and operational supportability in mind.

Identify technical, operational, and organizational risks, and work with the team to address them pragmatically.

Remove blockers, improve team efficiency, and create the conditions for engineers to do their best work.

Facilitate collaboration between software development, DevOps, infrastructure, product owners, project managers, and business stakeholders.

Provide regular feedback, coaching, mentoring, and performance guidance to team members.

Identify skill gaps within the team and support hiring, training, knowledge sharing, and professional development initiatives.

Encourage a culture of ownership, accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement, and engineering excellence.

Help the team work independently while maintaining alignment with broader departmental and business objectives.

Make pragmatic decisions in ambiguous situations, with limited oversight or guidance when needed.

What you’ll bring

Strong experience leading software engineering, DevOps, platform, or infrastructure-related teams.

A solid technical background in software development and modern engineering practices.

Experience managing teams composed of developers and DevOps engineers with diverse skills and seniority levels.

Strong understanding of DevOps practices, CI/CD, automation, deployment pipelines, release management, and operational workflows.

Good knowledge of containerized environments, especially Docker and Kubernetes .

Experience with infrastructure concepts, including Linux, networking, virtualisation, platform operations, and cloud or private cloud environments.

Experience with OpenStack would be a strong plus.

Familiarity with application development stacks such as Python, Django, Node.js , React, and PostgreSQL .

Experience with GitLab , GitLab CI/CD, source control workflows, and collaborative development practices.

Experience with binary or artifact repository management tools such as Nexus .

Ability to understand architecture discussions, challenge technical decisions constructively, and guide teams toward pragmatic solutions.

Good understanding of software development lifecycle, agile delivery, platform engineering, observability, monitoring, logging, and incident management.

Strong product mindset, with the ability to connect technical work to user needs, business value, and long-term sustainability.

Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain technical topics clearly to engineers, stakeholders, and non-technical audiences.

Strong negotiation and stakeholder management skills, especially when dealing with competing priorities or unclear requirements.

A people-oriented leadership style, with the ability to build trust, motivate teams, and support individual growth.

Strong organizational skills, with the ability to create structure, prioritize effectively, and keep the team focused on outcomes.

A pragmatic mindset, balancing technical excellence with delivery constraints and business realities.

Ability to work independently, make decisions, and move initiatives forward with limited supervision.

Strong sense of accountability for team performance, product outcomes, and engineering quality.

Curiosity and genuine interest in technology, product development, and continuous improvement

Nice to have

Experience managing teams responsible for internal applications, enterprise tools, or internal developer platforms.

Experience working in hybrid, private cloud, or on-premise infrastructure environments.

Hands-on or management experience with OpenStack-based platforms.

Experience with tools such as Helm, Terraform, Ansible, Argo CD, Prometheus, Grafana, or similar technologies.

Experience defining technical or product roadmaps for internal platforms or applications.

Experience improving engineering workflows, developer experience, CI/CD maturity, or operational reliability.

Experience managing services with a focus on security, scalability, reliability, and internal user experience.

Background that combines software development, infrastructure, and operations.