DevOps Engineer

DevOps Engineer – 12-Month FTC (SC Cleared)

Location: Remote (UK-based) with ad hoc travel to London (approx. twice per month)

Clearance: MUST hold active SC Clearance

Contract: 12-Month Fixed-Term Contract

About Amber Labs

Amber Labs is a cutting-edge consultancy delivering data-driven, cloud-native, and digital transformation solutions for government and enterprise clients. We specialise in modern engineering practices and pride ourselves on our ability to deliver secure, scalable, high-impact technology outcomes.

We are expanding our DevOps capability and are seeking a highly skilled DevOps Engineer with deep hands-on cloud experience, strong AWS fundamentals, and proven expertise in Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, and modern CI/CD tooling such as ArgoCD or Concourse.

Role Overview

This role sits within a cloud-native delivery team responsible for building, deploying, and supporting production workloads on AWS using modern DevOps engineering practices. You will work in a highly technical environment, collaborating with engineers, architects, and delivery teams to design reliable, secure, and scalable infrastructure.

You must be an experienced problem-solver—comfortable navigating complex AWS environments, debugging production issues, and delivering high-quality infrastructure code. The role requires hands-on engineering, not theoretical knowledge.

Key Responsibilities

AWS Engineering

• Design, deploy, and support production workloads using core AWS services including: EC2, VPC/Subnets, Security Groups, IAM, S3, CloudWatch, Load Balancers, Autoscaling, EKS/ECS, and Lambda.
• Build scalable, secure cloud architectures following AWS best practices.
• Troubleshoot real-world cloud issues including networking, permissions, logging, and performance.

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)

• Write and maintain Terraform modules and reusable infrastructure patterns.
• Manage Terraform state effectively and resolve state conflicts.
• Review and troubleshoot Terraform plans and CI/CD pipeline failures.
• Deliver IaC that is maintainable, version-controlled, and production-ready.

Kubernetes & Helm

• Deploy and manage workloads on EKS.
• Build and maintain Helm charts for application deployments.
• Manage cluster operations including RBAC, networking, scaling, upgrades, and security.
• Diagnose pod failures, DNS issues, ingress problems, resource constraints, and deployment errors.

CI/CD & Deployment Automation

• Design, build, and maintain CI/CD pipelines using ArgoCD or Concourse.
• Implement GitOps-based deployment workflows for Kubernetes workloads.
• Troubleshoot pipeline failures, deployment issues, and promotion workflows across environments.
• Ensure CI/CD pipelines are secure, reliable, and aligned with DevOps best practices.

Cloud-Native Troubleshooting

• Investigate production issues across AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Use CloudWatch logs, metrics, and alarms to diagnose issues.
• Resolve IAM permission issues, network misconfigurations, and container runtime problems.
• Support engineering teams by ensuring stable, reliable, and observable environments.

Required Skills & Experience

• Active SC Clearance (mandatory).
• Extensive hands-on experience with AWS services in production environments.
• Strong proficiency in Terraform, including module development and state management.
• Production experience running workloads on Kubernetes (EKS) and building Helm charts.
• Hands-on, production experience with CI/CD tooling — must have experience using ArgoCD or Concourse.
• Excellent troubleshooting skills across cloud networking, IAM, Kubernetes, containers, CI/CD pipelines, and IaC.
• Ability to work autonomously and solve complex technical issues under pressure.
• Comfortable contributing to cloud architecture, reliability, and DevOps best practices.

Desirable Experience

• Experience supporting secure or regulated environments.
• Experience with additional CI/CD tools (e.g. GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins).
• Understanding of cloud security best practices, container hardening, and least-privilege IAM.
• Familiarity with cloud-native observability tools (e.g. Prometheus, Grafana, ELK).

What We Offer

• 12-month fixed-term contract with competitive salary.
• Remote-first working with occasional travel to London.
• Opportunity to work with experienced cloud, DevOps, and data engineering teams.
• The chance to contribute to meaningful, high-impact digital transformation programmes.