Principal DevOps Engineer (AI)

Principal DevOps Engineer (AI Platform)
£751/day Umbrella | Fully Remote | SC Cleared | Contract to March 2027
We’re supporting a major public sector programme seeking an experienced Principal DevOps Engineer to lead the development of enterprise-scale AI platform capabilities.
This is a senior technical leadership role focused on building the cloud, automation, governance and platform foundations that enable the secure delivery of AI products, services and solutions at scale. You’ll work at the forefront of AI platform engineering, helping shape the infrastructure and tooling that supports next-generation AI adoption across a large, complex organisation.
Key Responsibilities

Design, build and optimise enterprise AI platform capabilities across Azure and AWS environments
Develop AI landing zones, engineering environments and experimentation platforms
Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automation and self-service platform capabilities
Build and maintain CI/CD and MLOps pipelines supporting AI solution delivery
Enable secure integration of AI services, APIs, agents, foundation models and orchestration frameworks
Develop observability, monitoring, logging and operational support capabilities
Establish platform governance, security controls and operational guardrails
Support deployment, scaling and management of AI-powered products and services
Evaluate emerging AI technologies and platform tooling
Drive optimisation of platform performance, resilience and cloud costs
Create reusable services, templates, accelerators and reference architectures
Provide technical leadership across engineering, data and AI teams
Ensure alignment with architecture, security and governance standards

Essential Experience

Extensive Platform Engineering, DevOps and Cloud Infrastructure experience
Proven background building and operating AI platforms within Azure and AWS
Experience with Azure AI Foundry, AWS Bedrock and related AI ecosystem services
Strong MLOps, DevOps and CI/CD expertise
Infrastructure as Code experience using Terraform, Bicep and/or CloudFormation
Containerisation and orchestration technologies including Docker and Kubernetes
API management, integration architectures and event-driven systems
Monitoring, observability and operational support tooling
Cloud security, identity management, governance and compliance controls
Experience supporting AI agents, RAG architectures, model integrations and orchestration frameworks
FinOps and cloud cost optimisation experience
Strong automation and scripting capabilities

Ideal Profile

Passion for emerging AI technologies
Strategic mindset with strong technical leadership capability
Able to balance innovation, security, risk and cost considerations
Strong focus on automation and engineering excellence
Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills
Comfortable working within evolving and ambiguous environments
Collaborative, delivery-focused and proactive approach

Reasonable Adjustments:
Respect and equality are core values to us. We are proud of the diverse and inclusive community we have built, and we welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and perspectives. Our success is driven by our people, united by the spirit of partnership to deliver the best resourcing solutions for our clients.
If you need any help or adjustments during the recruitment process for any reason, please let us know when you apply or talk to the recruiters directly so we can support you.