Leads technical operations for a newly built, large-scale on-premises infrastructure and container platform, from the as-built reference set through to the runbook estate. Owns the rota and on-call escalation chain, and line-manages the engineering team. Acts as the technical anchor between design and live operations, able to speak to the platform end to end, from bare metal through to the workloads running on it, and the person the team turns to when something goes seriously wrong. Key responsibilities
Own technical standards and the operational runbook estate, keeping the versioning and review procedure enforced so it stays accurate rather than decaying into shelfware. Own the platform's automation and GitOps pipelines, including Git-backed configuration, Ansible playbooks and ArgoCD-reconciled Kubernetes state, so change across the estate is auditable and repeatable. Own the rota and the on-call escalation chain across multiple coverage bands, balancing fair-share rotation against real operational risk. Line-manage senior engineers, engineers and coordinators, setting objectives, holding the competency bar, and developing them toward the next level. Act as the L3 escalation point and incident commander for major incidents, owning the technical response until service is restored. Essential skills and experience
Server and infrastructure provisioning and lifecycle management at scale: imaging, inventory, node role assignment, and firmware/OS patching, using a bare-metal provisioning platform (for example MAAS, Foreman or a comparable tool). Comfortable owning node lifecycle workflows end to end: drain, reassign, reprovision, validate, return to service. Container image lifecycle management: build, scan, sign/approve, promote and replicate OCI images through a registry pipeline (for example JFrog Artifactory, Harbor or equivalent). Real, current Kubernetes administration across multiple purpose-built clusters (for example separate admin, workload and platform-services clusters), covering cluster lifecycle, upgrades, CNI, and CSI-backed persistent storage. Strong networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, DNS, routing, load balancing, VLANs and Ethernet troubleshooting at scale.
