Senior Operations Engineer

Amplience Amplience Ltd; England; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading tech company in North East England is seeking a Senior Operations Engineer to design and optimise cloud infrastructure. You will drive architectural decisions, implement security frameworks, and mentor a team. The ideal candidate has extensive AWS experience, strong Linux skills, and a proven ability to enhance system reliability. The company offers a competitive salary and a range of benefits, including enhanced maternity leave and programs for continuous improvement and development.

Benefits

Pension Scheme

Annual Leave

Enhanced Maternity Leave

Enhanced Paternity Leave

Sick Pay

Birthday Leave

Qualifications

• Extensive hands-on experience architecting and operating AWS environments at scale.
• Deep understanding of AWS Well-Architected Framework.
• Strong networking knowledge including DNS, VPCs, firewalls, etc.

Responsibilities

• Design and optimise cloud infrastructure on AWS.
• Lead implementation of security frameworks.
• Champion infrastructure-as-code practices across the organization.

Skills

AWS environment architecture

Linux systems administration

Networking expertise

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Bash scripting

Observability tools

Security best practices

CI/CD pipeline optimization

Customer-centric approach

Tools

AWS CDK

Terraform

CloudFormation

Job description

Senior Operations Engineer

Department: Operations

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: North East England

Description

As a Senior Operations Engineer, you will be involved with the design and evolution of our cloud infrastructure while mentoring within the operations team. You will drive architectural decisions, establish best practices, and work closely with leadership to scale our systems for growth. This role is ideal for someone with deep expertise in cloud platforms (especially AWS), proven leadership in infrastructure projects, and a track record of building reliable, secure systems at scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, architect, and optimise cloud infrastructure on AWS, ensuring scalability, security, and cost‑effectiveness.
• Lead the implementation of security frameworks, including advanced IAM architectures, compliance controls, threat modelling, and security automation.
• Champion infrastructure‑as‑code practices and drive adoption of automation across the organization using tools like AWS CDK, CloudFormation, and Terraform.
• Contribute to change management processes, establishing standards for planning, risk assessment, documentation, and rollback procedures.
• Lead incident response efforts, conduct thorough post‑mortems, and implement preventive measures to improve system reliability.
• Partner with engineering and product teams on strategic architecture decisions, capacity planning, and platform evolution.
• Establish and enforce standards for secrets management, credential lifecycle, and secure configuration management.
• Mentor junior and mid‑level engineers, conducting code reviews and sharing expertise across the team.
• Define and evolve internal documentation standards, runbooks, and knowledge‑sharing practices.

What You’ll Bring (Skills, Experience & Mindset)

Skills & Experience

• Extensive hands‑on experience architecting and operating production AWS environments at scale.
• Deep understanding of AWS Well‑Architected Framework and ability to apply it to complex system designs.
• Expert‑level knowledge of Linux systems administration and performance tuning (Fedora, RHEL, etc.).
• Strong networking expertise (DNS, VPCs, firewalls, ACLs, routing, load balancing, etc.).
• Working knowledge of DNS, CDN, caching, firewalls, load balancers, and WAFs to ensure secure and performant web delivery.
• Proven expertise with IaC tooling including AWS CDK, CloudFormation, and Terraform, including module/library design.
• Advanced scripting and automation capabilities in Bash, Python, or Go.
• Excellent knowledge of modern observability tools and a demonstrated ability to implement the SRE approach to reliability (SLOs/SLIs, error budgets, eliminating toil).
• Comprehensive understanding of security best practices, including zero‑trust architectures, compliance requirements, and security tooling.
• Demonstrated experience building and optimising CI/CD pipelines and GitOps workflows.
• Ability to participate in 24/7 support rotations and respond to incidents effectively.
• Proven ability to prioritise competing demands, lead cross‑functional initiatives, and deliver results in fast‑paced environments.

Mindset & Approach

• Customer and team centric with strong stakeholder management skills.
• Comfortable working independently on assigned tasks while collaborating with wider teams.
• Passionate about continuous improvement with an automation‑first mindset, knowledge sharing, and developing team capabilities.
• Strategic thinker with excellent judgment in balancing short‑term needs with long‑term architectural goals.
• Effective communicator who can translate technical concepts for varied audiences.

Additional Skills

• Deep experience with serverless architectures and container orchestration platforms (ECS, EKS, Kubernetes).
• Proven track record with observability platforms like CloudWatch, Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, or similar.
• Experience establishing SRE practices, incident management processes, and reliability engineering culture.
• Direct experience implementing compliance frameworks (e.g., ISO 27001, SOC2, PCI‑DSS) or relevant security certifications.

Benefits

• Pension Scheme
  • Auto‑enrolled after 3 months' service
  • Salary sacrifice scheme to maximise tax efficiency
  • 5% employee contribution, matched by 5% from Amplience
  • Pension broker: Titan Group (offers financial advice)
  • Pension provider: Aegon (moved from Aviva in 2024)
• Annual Leave 25 days paid holiday as standard
• Length of Service Entitlement
  • UK Team Entitlement
    • 3+ years continuous service – 26 days annual leave entitlement
    • 4+ years continuous service – 27 days annual leave entitlement
    • 5+ years continuous service – 28 days annual leave entitlement
    • 6+ years continuous service – 29 days annual leave entitlement
    • 7+ years continuous service – 30 days annual leave entitlement
• Enhanced Maternity Leave
  • 12 weeks full pay
  • 12 weeks at 50% pay
  • 15 weeks at statutory maternity pay (SMP)
  • 13 weeks unpaid
• Enhanced Paternity Leave
  • 2 weeks full pay
• Sick Pay Up to one month’s full pay per calendar year (at company discretion, with medical certificate)
• Study Leave 5 days for employees on accredited long‑term courses (12+ months)
• Birthday Leave One paid day off during your birthday month
• Company‑Wide Recharge Days One day off per quarter for the whole business – rest, recharge, and reset
• All roles are laptop‑enabled
• Working arrangements agreed with your line manager
• Freedom Fridays: Finish early on Fridays to support work‑life balance (full‑time employees only)
• Holiday Buy Scheme Purchase up to 5 extra days per year, repaid through salary deductions
• Cycle to Work Scheme Save on bikes & accessories via tax‑efficient payments (Blackhawk Network)
• Tech Scheme Purchase tech items and spread the cost over 12 months via salary deduction (Blackhawk Network)
• Season Ticket Loan Advance loans available for travel tickets, repaid via payroll
• Charity/Volunteer Days Up to 3 paid days a year for volunteering or charity work
• Payroll Giving (CAF – Give As You Earn) Tax‑free donations to UK charities, directly from your salary
• Eyecare Reimbursement for a standard eye exam every two years
• Employee Referral Bonus
  • £1,000 / €1,139 / $1,337
  • 50% paid at 4 months, 50% at 7 months post‑hire