Tech Lead SDLC [T500-24504]

Talent500 is hiring for one of its clients.

Job Purpose:

Internal Products and Platforms (IP&P) is leading the transformation of Bupas internal technology infrastructure. With a team of over 400 people and a budget exceeding 100 million, examples of our work include: the transition from data centers and legacy cloud infrastructure to modern hyperscale cloud platforms and SDWAN & SASE networks, consolidation of our identity tenants across BGIUK, and modernization of our digital workplace to enable truly connected care.

The Technical Lead will be an expert in their field with proven experience in SASE technology delivery. As a Technical Lead, you will be responsible for designing, developing, maintaining, and supporting high quality solutions and infrastructure as part of the Secure Access Product team. You will work closely with the Product Manager to ensure the product / technology area meets business needs while aligning with strategic and architectural direction

The job holder will have in-depth knowledge of their technical domain allowing them to lead technical analysis, specification, estimation, development, implementation and support of software and infrastructure solutions. Working with product managers, business users, third parties, and other colleagues to offer direction and guide development activities, instigate unit test strategies and propose new directions and avenues to expand current capabilities.

Accountabilities and Responsibilities:

The Lead DevOps Engineer SDLC will play a key role in developing and enhancing Bupas Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) tool ecosystem, ensuring it delivers a seamless and efficient experience for engineering teams across the business. This role focuses on technical design, implementation, and operational excellence of the SDLC platform. Working closely with the SDLC Product Manager and other stakeholders, the role holder will ensure fast, safe and reliable software delivery for Bupa. The position requires strong collaboration across development, QA, security, and operations teams to ensure that SDLC tools meet functional, compliance, and performance requirements, enabling Bupa to deliver world-class products and services.

Key responsibilities:

Platform Ownership:

• Own the design and evolution of the end-to-end SDLC platform (code, build, test, scan, deploy and observe processes)
• Own platform components such as: Source control, CI/CD systems, Artifact repositories, IaC tooling, Kubernetes/PaaS platforms.
• Monitor system performance and implement optimizations

CI/CD & Automation:

• Architect and maintain highly available, scalable CI/CD systems.
• Provide standardized pipelines, reusable templates and self-service capabilities for development teams.
• Ensure scalability, security, and reliability of SDLC platform.

Security and compliance:

• Embed security into the SDLC platform: SAST, DAST, dependency scanning, Secret management, Policy-as-code.
• Implement governance, compliance, and security standards in pipelines and infrastructure.
• Ensure auditability and traceability across pipelines and not only.

Reliability, observability & Operations:

• Own monitoring, logging and alerting (eg Grafana, ELK, etc).
• Leads incident response and root cause analysis.
• Leads and drive COEs.

Team Leadership:

• Mentor and guide DevOps/Platform engineers.
• Work closely with Engineering leadership, Security, Architecture, Product teams.
• Optimize developer experience by providing clear documentation, golden paths and fast, predictable delivery workflows.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and tools to improve delivery speed and quality.

Qualifications, skills and experience:

The role holder is expected to have the following qualification(s), skills and experience:

Technical Skills:

• 8+ years of experience in DevOps, platform engineering or software engineering.
• Experience designing end-to-end SDLC platforms.
• Deep understanding and experience with SDLC tooling such as source control management (e.g., GitHub), CI/CD pipelines (e.g. GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps), build and artifact management, release and deploy management, observability and incident management.
• Experience designing and operating scalable CI/CD and automation platforms, delivering reusable pipelines, self-service tooling and standardized delivery patterns.
• Proven experience in embedding security and compliance into SDLC, implementing DevSecOps practices such as automated scanning, secret management and policy-as-code.
• Expertise in Infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation or CDK)
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms, containerization and orchestration technology.
• Strong background in reliability and operations, defining SLOs, leading incident response, and driving root-cause remediation.
• Experience providing technical leadership and mentorship, influencing cross-team decision, setting engineers standards and collaborating with various teams and stakeholders.
• Experience operating with high ownership and autonomy, delivering speed, reliability, security and developer experience.
• Ability to identify AI and automation opportunities that add measurable value.
• Excellent communication and documentation skills.

Nice to have:

• Experience with Jira Software: workflow schemes, screens, issue type hierarchies/epics, custom fields, permission & notification schemes, automation rules.

Judgement Skills:

• Logical approach to software solutions and problem solving
• Be proactive in identifying and resolving potential issues, and escalate appropriately
• Ability to influence technical project outcomes
• Able to adapt to different situations requiring interpretive and constructive thinking and a considerable degree of evaluative judgement
• Takes the lead in resolving technical issues within their domain, regardless of organizational boundaries

Why you will succeed:

• You have the gift of being able to see clear technical solutions to complex problems.
• You love technology and don't think it's bizarre to be passionate about it.
• You love to express your vision about where things could go, and enjoy lively, respectful discussions about technical topics.
• Your communication skills (written and spoken) are something you pride yourself on.
• You understand, when communicating complicated ideas, less is more.
• You are energised by achieving outcomes, not being part of a delivery chain.
• Once you've presented your vision, you know how to bring people along.
• You understand that diplomacy and relationship building is as essential as a strong technical vision.
• Youre pragmatic, for example you understand that there are ways to tactically integrate, and then ways to properly integrate systems and know how to make the case for both as appropriate.
• You value ''simple'' as a design goal and recognise that simple and easy are very much not the same thing.

Freedom to Act:

• Able to work independently, with a high degree of autonomy, subject to management direction
• Working within regulatory, professional (best practice) and cultural (Bupa policy) constraints
• Will make and influence decisions which affect the outcome of solution design, development, service provision