Lead DevOps Engineer

Full-time/permanent position (note: unfortunately we can not provide sponsorship)100% remote - must be located in eastern time zoneJOB DESCRIPTION:Team Leadership & CoachingLead and mentor a team of DevOps engineers, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration.Support career development and skill-building within the team.Act as a bridge between DevOps, Architecture, and Development teams to align strategies and execution.Hands-On DevOps EngineeringMaintain and enhance CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, Bitbucket, and Gradle.Optimize infrastructure for cloud-native deployments, ensuring scalability and reliability.Support and refine build automation, infrastructure as code (IaC), and containerization strategies.Develop and maintain observability solutions, ensuring reliability, security, and performance of services.Cloud-Native & GitOps TransformationDrive the transition towards GitOps practices, automating deployment workflows and reducing manual interventions.Implement DevSecOps principles to enhance security automation and compliance within CI/CD pipelines.Guide the team in leveraging cloud-native architectures and technologies effectively.Collaboration & Stakeholder ManagementWork closely with development teams (Java & Angular) to enhance developer experience and streamline software delivery.Partner with security teams to embed security-by-design principles into DevOps workflows.Communicate technical strategies and progress to senior management and stakeholders.Required Qualifications5+ years of experience in DevOps, SRE, or infrastructure engineering.2+ years of leadership experience (formal or informal) in a DevOps or software engineering team.Strong expertise in CI/CD pipelines, automation, and infrastructure-as-code.Experience with Jenkins, Bitbucket, Gradle, and GitOps tools (e.g., ArgoCD, Flux).Solid background in cloud-native architectures and deployment strategies.Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and orchestration.Understanding of DevSecOps best practices and security automation.Strong collaboration and communication skills, able to work across teams and geographies.Experience with public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and their DevOps toolchains.Knowledge of monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack).Background in performance tuning and system reliability engineering (SRE).Familiarity with progressive delivery techniques (e.g., feature flags, canary releases)Additional Notes:The team's customers are the company's own software engineersThis team builds and maintains the CI/CD pipelines the development teams ship throughWorks directly with developers (Java) to improve build and delivery workflowsScrum environment, self-organizing teamsStrong emphasis on automation, continuous integration, and fully automated testingLooking for a genuine player/coachNeed experience managing a team of close to 10 (not just a handful of engineers)Real experience building Java-based software packages including dependency management, packaging, artifact promotion, JDK upgrades. Not writing application code.Gradle is important; Jenkins and Bitbucket are the stackOn-prem Kubernetes experienceAWS and EKS preferred; AKS or GKE also consideredAI experience is a significant plus. This group works closely with AI initiatives, bridging DevOps, automation, and software engineering. The team uses AWS Bedrock. Relevant work: AI automation, AI-assisted testing, log analysis, auto-defect creation, evaluating AI tooling to improve development workflows.GitOps (ArgoCD/Flux), DevSecOps, Docker, and observability (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK)Backlog grooming and Agile planningWho fitsHands-on engineer and player/coach with a strong automation mindsetStrong communicator, comfortable in self-organizing Scrum teamsSolid DevOps background supporting Java development teamsAble to bridge development, automation, and AI-driven initiatives