Head of Dev Ops

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Unity Advisory is seeking a Head of DevOps in London, hybrid. The role owns cloud platforms and developer enablement across product, partner, and data workloads, blending strategic platform leadership with hands-on engineering to build fast, secure, observable, cost-efficient paved roads. Key focus areas include multi-account cloud foundations, golden paths for developers, CI/CD and IaC, platform SRE with SLIs/SLOs, security and compliance, observability, GitOps, and cost governance, plus collaboration with Engineering, Data, Security and IT. You’ll lead a small DevOps/SRE team, manage vendors, and drive secure landing zones for client work. To apply, tailor CV to demonstrate multi-tenant, regulated industry experience, cloud certifications, Terraform, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and measurable improvements in lead time and reliability; highlight leadership, stakeholder management, and a track record delivering platform-scale outcomes.

Unity Advisory is a challenger advisory firm.

Built for the AI-enabled world, we operate a lean, conflict-free, and client-centric model that embeds AI across all workstreams.

With no audit practice, we do not have the audit-related conflicts which allows us to focus entirely on delivering value to clients with agility and innovative, outcome-based commercial models. Our culture is highly collaborative and flat-structured and free of traditional partner P&L silos – pursuing the best outcomes for our clients.

Overview

We are hiring a Head of DevOps to own our cloud platforms and developer enablement across product teams, partner projects, and data workloads. This role blends strategic platform leadership with hands‑on engineering, building paved roads that make delivery fast, secure, observable, and cost‑efficient. You will define the DevOps vision, establish golden paths, and run the shared infrastructure that powers internal engineering and external client solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the cloud platform strategy and roadmap across product, partner, and data domains, aligned to business priorities and cost targets.

• Build and operate secure, scalable multi‑account cloud foundations with strong guardrails, identity boundaries, and least‑privilege access.

• Define and maintain golden paths for developers: repo bootstraps, CI/CD templates, IaC modules, and service archetypes.

• Lead and evolve CI/CD: trunk‑based development, pipelines, quality gates, artifact management, and progressive delivery.

• Establish robust platform SRE practices: SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, incident response, post‑incident reviews, and capacity planning.

• Implement platform security controls: secrets management, image scanning, SBOMs, policy‑as‑code, vulnerability management, and compliance reporting (e.g., ISO 27001 alignment).

• Provide first‑class observability: logging, metrics, traces, dashboards, and alerting with actionable runbooks.

• Standardise infrastructure as code (Terraform / Helm) and GitOps for environments from dev to production.

• Partner with Data and Analytics to run reliable, governed data platforms, including compute, storage, orchestration, and secure data access.

• Support partner/client projects with repeatable patterns for secure landing zones, connectivity, and deployment workflows.

• Manage cloud cost visibility and optimisation: budgets, tagging, chargeback/showback, rightsizing, and lifecycle policies.

• Select and run core platform tooling: secrets, build, artifact, container registry, runtime, observability, and incident tooling.

• Lead a small, high‑impact DevOps/SRE team. Hire, mentor, and establish on‑call, ways of working, and career growth.

• Collaborate with Engineering, Data, Security, and IT to align platform standards, SSO/identity, and endpoint/device policies.

• Vendor and contract management for cloud and platform services, holding suppliers to SLAs and security requirements.

Requirements

• Proven experience leading DevOps/SRE or platform engineering for cloud‑native products and data workloads.

• Deep expertise in:

  • Cloud & Networking: AWS or Azure core services, multi‑account design, VPC/VNet, private networking, load balancing, DNS, CDN.

  • Containers & Runtime: Kubernetes or ECS/AKS, serverless, service mesh, autoscaling, blue/green and canary deploys.

  • CI/CD & Automation: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, or similar. Trunk‑based development and pipeline hardening.

  • Infrastructure as Code: Terraform or Pulumi. Modularisation, environments, and policy‑as‑code (e.g., OPA/Conftest).

  • Security & Compliance: Secrets management, IAM/Entra, key management, image scanning, SBOM, ISO 27001 practices.

  • Observability & Reliability: Prometheus/Grafana, CloudWatch, OpenTelemetry, log aggregation, alerting, SLOs, incident response.

  • Data Platform Basics: Storage tiers, orchestration, data pipelines, access controls, and cost governance.

• Track record creating developer golden paths and reducing lead time for changes while improving reliability.

• Strong stakeholder skills and the ability to balance speed, security, and cost.

• Excellent communication and leadership, with experience building and mentoring platform teams.

• Relevant certifications or equivalent experience are beneficial (e.g., AWS/Azure, CKAD/CKA, CISSP, ITIL for service practices).

Nice to Have

• Experience in regulated industries such as financial services, insurance, or similar.

• Prior responsibility for multi‑tenant platforms supporting both internal products and external client workloads.

• Familiarity with data tooling such as dbt, Airflow, Spark, Snowflake or Databricks and governed data sharing.

• Experience introducing FinOps practices and platform product management.

Working at Unity Advisory

We offer a truly hybrid and flexible working environment and the opportunity to be at the forefront of AI-driven advisory services. You’ll be part of a highly collaborative, flat-structured culture, empowered to contribute to the way we scale our business and support our clients.

This is an exciting opportunity to join a fast-growing firm and accelerate your career in professional services.

Additional Information

At Unity Advisory, we are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process. In line with the Equality Act 2010, we will accommodate any suitable candidate requiring assistance to attend or conduct an interview. If you need any adjustments or support, please let us know when either scheduling your interview or in your application cover letter. We are dedicated to ensuring everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed and are here to support you throughout the process.

PLEASE NOTE: We do not accept unsolicited CVs from third-party agencies.