Senior DevOps / Automation Engineer

Senior DevOps / Automation Engineer - IBM Z & Hybrid Platforms

Rate: 65-70 per hour, Inside IR35
Contract: 6 months
Location: Remote
Engagement: Contract

The Opportunity

We are seeking an experienced Senior DevOps / Automation Engineer to support a strategic automation and DevOps modernisation programme spanning IBM Z mainframe and distributed platforms.

This is an engineering-focused role for someone who can design and build robust, production-grade automation solutions, integrate CI/CD pipelines, strengthen compliance controls and deliver secure, observable and resilient workflows across a complex enterprise environment.

You will work across Python, Ansible Automation Platform (AAP), Jenkins, GitHub, PostgreSQL, HashiCorp Vault and enterprise observability tooling, helping to establish scalable automation services that are reliable, auditable and reusable across global platforms.

Key Responsibilities

Automation Engineering

• Design and develop production-quality automation using Python and YAML.
• Build and maintain Ansible playbooks using Ansible Automation Platform (AAP).
• Engineer idempotent, restartable and state-aware workflows.
• Integrate automation across distributed and IBM Z environments, including z/OS job execution where relevant.
• Implement robust error handling, retry logic and operational safeguards.

CI/CD & DevOps

• Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines using GitHub and Jenkins, including Groovy-based pipeline development.
• Embed automated compliance checks, quality gates and verification controls.
• Integrate artefact management through Nexus Repository.
• Support Git workflows, branching strategies, pull requests, code reviews and release management.

Observability & Monitoring

• Develop Grafana dashboards and telemetry pipelines.
• Integrate logging and metrics with enterprise observability platforms such as Splunk.
• Build dashboards for compliance monitoring and configuration drift detection.
• Produce structured reporting to support operational governance and audit requirements.

Data & State Management

• Design PostgreSQL schemas to support automation state, job history and operational reporting.
• Implement execution-state tracking, job history retention and audit evidence capture.
• Optimise queries and data handling to improve reliability and operational performance.

Security, Governance & Compliance

• Implement secure secrets management using HashiCorp Vault.
• Integrate Vault with CI/CD pipelines and AAP workflows.
• Apply least-privilege principles and secure credential lifecycle management.
• Embed compliance verification and evidence capture into automated workflows.
• Support configuration drift detection, remediation and enterprise automation standards.
• Maintain documentation suitable for risk, audit and regulatory stakeholders.

Essential Skills & Experience

The successful candidate will demonstrate strong practical experience in:

• Python: Production-quality development, modular design, error handling, logging and testing.
• Ansible: Enterprise-scale automation using Ansible Automation Platform.
• CI/CD: Jenkins pipeline development, including Groovy, and GitHub-based workflows.
• PostgreSQL: Schema design, query optimisation and operational data management.
• YAML: Structured, maintainable automation definitions.
• Git: Version control, branching, code reviews and release practices.
• Grafana: Dashboard development and metrics interpretation.
• Secrets management: HashiCorp Vault integration and automation.
• Artefact management: Nexus Repository or an equivalent artefact repository.

You should be comfortable engineering automation for complex enterprise environments, with a strong focus on reliability, security, maintainability and operational resilience.

Desirable Experience

Experience in one or more of the following areas would be advantageous:

• IBM Z and z/OS concepts, including JCL and batch scheduling.
• z/OS workflow tooling such as IBM z/OSMF or Zowe CLI.
• Enterprise workload scheduling, including IWS patterns.
• Configuration drift management and automated remediation.
• API integration and infrastructure-as-code governance.
• Observability exporters and metrics pipelines.
• Regulated financial services environments.

What We're Looking For

You will be a structured, systems-oriented engineer who understands that enterprise automation requires more than writing scripts.

You should be able to:

• Design resilient automation systems that can recover from failures and partial job completion.
• Build workflows that are restartable, observable and auditable.
• Balance engineering simplicity with production-grade robustness.
• Develop reusable automation patterns for distributed teams and global environments.
• Collaborate effectively with infrastructure, mainframe, DevOps, risk and audit teams.
• Apply standards pragmatically while maintaining strong governance and security controls.
• Drive automation by design rather than relying on manual workarounds.

Apply Now

If you have strong Python, Ansible and CI/CD engineering experience and enjoy building secure, resilient automation across complex enterprise platforms, we'd welcome your application.

Contract rate: 65-70 per hour, Inside IR35. </p

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