DevOps & Environment Manager
Posted 2 days ago by Synechron
Negotiable
Undetermined
Hybrid
London, UK
Summary: The DevOps & Environment Manager at Synechron will lead the management of AWS-based environments, ensuring stability, security, and automation for mission-critical platforms. This role requires strong technical capabilities and leadership skills to transition teams from reactive support to proactive, risk-led delivery. The successful candidate will define environment strategies and improve operational governance while collaborating with various teams. The position is based in London and offers a hybrid working arrangement.
Key Responsibilities:
- Define and maintain the environment strategy across AWS-based platforms, including build standards, life cycle management, and operational readiness.
- Establish standards and governance for environment creation, configuration, refresh, and decommissioning.
- Drive consistency across DEV, QA, UAT, pre-production, and production environments.
- Maintain clear visibility of environment health, technical debt, and operational risk.
- Own and manage AMI refresh cycles across the estate, ensuring security currency, compliance, and controlled rollout.
- Lead Windows Server and RHEL patching activities across relevant environments.
- Coordinate database engine patching in partnership with engineering, database, and operations teams.
- Maintain forward-looking patch calendars aligned to vendor releases, vulnerability management, and internal risk priorities.
- Ensure patching is tested, communicated, approved, evidenced, and executed with minimal service disruption.
- Build and improve environment automation using Infrastructure as Code.
- Standardise environment provisioning through reusable Terraform and/or CloudFormation modules.
- Integrate post-deployment validation, smoke tests, and health checks into CI/CD pipelines.
- Reduce manual effort, configuration drift, and operational toil through automation-first engineering.
- Build and maintain effective monitoring, alerting, and dashboards for environment health and readiness.
- Improve signal-to-noise ratio by ensuring alerts are actionable, owned, and aligned to SRE principles.
- Track environment risks, patch status, compliance gaps, and resilience indicators.
- Support operational readiness reviews for releases, upgrades, and major changes.
- Proactively identify and remediate security, patching, configuration, and platform risks.
- Drive resolution of vulnerabilities, compliance findings, and environment-related control gaps.
- Lead root-cause analysis for environment-related incidents and implement preventative automation.
- Improve platform resilience, recovery readiness, and repeatability across the estate.
- Manage, mentor, and guide DevOps and environment engineers.
- Set clear expectations, priorities, delivery plans, and accountability.
- Partner with Engineering, Product, Security, Infrastructure, and Operations teams on release planning, change management, and risk reduction.
- Act as a trusted technical leader, influencing standards and improving engineering discipline across teams.
- AMI refreshes are current, planned, auditable, and consistently executed.
- Windows, RHEL, and database patching are governed, tested, evidenced, and controlled.
- No production patching or major environment change occurs without validated testing, approval, and stakeholder alignment.
- Environment risks are visible, prioritised, tracked, and reduced over time.
- Environments are secure, consistent, resilient, and repeatable.
- Automation is used to prevent recurring manual fixes and reduce operational toil.
Key Skills:
- Strong hands-on experience managing AWS environments at enterprise scale.
- Proven experience owning AMI life cycle management, OS patching, and controlled environment refreshes.
- Strong understanding of Windows Server and RHEL administration in regulated or enterprise environments.
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD pipelines, and automated validation.
- Practical experience with monitoring, alerting, logging, and operational dashboards.
- Strong risk management mindset, with experience in vulnerability remediation and audit evidence.
- Ability to move teams from reactive firefighting to planned, predictable delivery.
- Strong stakeholder management, communication, and leadership skills.
- Financial services, index, data platform, or regulated industry experience is advantageous.
Salary (Rate): undetermined
City: London
Country: UK
Working Arrangements: hybrid
IR35 Status: undetermined
Seniority Level: undetermined
Industry: IT
Detailed Description From Employer:
DevOps & Environment Manager
About Synechron:
Synechron is a leading digital transformation consulting firm dedicated to delivering innovative technology solutions within banking, financial services, and insurance. We thrive on engineering excellence, collaboration, and a passion for cutting-edge technologies.
Job Location: London (Hybrid- 3 days in the office)
We are seeking an experienced DevOps & Environment Manager to lead the stability, security, automation, and life cycle management of AWS-based environments supporting mission-critical platforms.
This role will own and be accountable for environment standards, AMI refresh cycles, OS and DB patching, risk remediation, and operational readiness across Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux estates. The successful candidate will bring strong hands-on technical capability, disciplined operational governance, and the leadership skills needed to move teams from reactive support to predictable, risk-led delivery.
You will define environment strategy, improve automation, strengthen resilience, and ensure environments are secure, consistent, auditable, and production-ready.
Key Responsibilities
Environment Strategy & Ownership
- Define and maintain the environment strategy across AWS-based platforms, including build standards, life cycle management, and operational readiness.
- Establish standards and governance for environment creation, configuration, refresh, and decommissioning.
- Drive consistency across DEV, QA, UAT, pre-production, and production environments.
- Maintain clear visibility of environment health, technical debt, and operational risk.
AMI, OS & Database Patching
- Own and manage AMI refresh cycles across the estate, ensuring security currency, compliance, and controlled rollout.
- Lead Windows Server and RHEL patching activities across relevant environments.
- Coordinate database engine patching in partnership with engineering, database, and operations teams.
- Maintain forward-looking patch calendars aligned to vendor releases, vulnerability management, and internal risk priorities.
- Ensure patching is tested, communicated, approved, evidenced, and executed with minimal service disruption.
Automation & Infrastructure as Code
- Build and improve environment automation using Infrastructure as Code.
- Standardise environment provisioning through reusable Terraform and/or CloudFormation modules.
- Integrate post-deployment validation, smoke tests, and health checks into CI/CD pipelines.
- Reduce manual effort, configuration drift, and operational toil through automation-first engineering.
Monitoring, Alerting & Operational Quality
- Build and maintain effective monitoring, alerting, and dashboards for environment health and readiness.
- Improve signal-to-noise ratio by ensuring alerts are actionable, owned, and aligned to SRE principles.
- Track environment risks, patch status, compliance gaps, and resilience indicators.
- Support operational readiness reviews for releases, upgrades, and major changes.
Risk Remediation & Resilience
- Proactively identify and remediate security, patching, configuration, and platform risks.
- Drive resolution of vulnerabilities, compliance findings, and environment-related control gaps.
- Lead root-cause analysis for environment-related incidents and implement preventative automation.
- Improve platform resilience, recovery readiness, and repeatability across the estate.
Leadership & Collaboration
- Manage, mentor, and guide DevOps and environment engineers.
- Set clear expectations, priorities, delivery plans, and accountability.
- Partner with Engineering, Product, Security, Infrastructure, and Operations teams on release planning, change management, and risk reduction.
- Act as a trusted technical leader, influencing standards and improving engineering discipline across teams.
Core Accountabilities
- AMI refreshes are current, planned, auditable, and consistently executed.
- Windows, RHEL, and database patching are governed, tested, evidenced, and controlled.
- No production patching or major environment change occurs without validated testing, approval, and stakeholder alignment.
- Environment risks are visible, prioritised, tracked, and reduced over time.
- Environments are secure, consistent, resilient, and repeatable.
- Automation is used to prevent recurring manual fixes and reduce operational toil.
Technology Stack
- Cloud: AWS
- Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, CloudFormation
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Jenkins
- Containers: Docker, Kubernetes, Amazon EKS
- Monitoring & Logging: CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, Geneos, ELK/OpenSearch
- Scripting: Python, Shell/Bash, PowerShell
- Operating Systems: Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Databases: SQL Server, Post Gres and Sybase
Experience & Skills We Value
- Strong hands-on experience managing AWS environments at enterprise scale.
- Proven experience owning AMI life cycle management, OS patching, and controlled environment refreshes.
- Strong understanding of Windows Server and RHEL administration in regulated or enterprise environments.
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD pipelines, and automated validation.
- Practical experience with monitoring, alerting, logging, and operational dashboards.
- Strong risk management mindset, with experience in vulnerability remediation and audit evidence.
- Ability to move teams from reactive firefighting to planned, predictable delivery.
- Strong stakeholder management, communication, and leadership skills.
- Financial services, index, data platform, or regulated industry experience is advantageous.
Diversity Statement
Synechron are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiative Same Difference' is committed to fostering an inclusive culture - promoting equality, diversity and an environment that is respectful to all. We encourage applicants from across diverse backgrounds, race, ethnicities, religion, age, marital status, gender, sexual orientations, or disabilities to apply. We offer flexible workplace arrangements, mentoring, internal mobility, learning and development programmes to support our global workforce. Empowerment and collaboration are at the core of how we operate.
All employment decisions at Synechron are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to the applicant's gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disabled or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.