Head of DevOps (Contract) | Azure, CI/CD, IaC | Insurance Group Transformation Programme
- Day rate: £750 per day (Inside IR35)
- Location: London (2-3 days/week onsite)
- Contract length: 3 – 6 months initially
There's a DevOps function here that works fine day-to-day and falls apart the moment you ask it to think strategically. The team has drifted, governance has gone missing, and the business has lost sight of what DevOps actually does for them. They know it, and they've brought in a programme to fix it. This is the role that sits at the centre of that.
The end client is a large, well-established UK insurance group. You'd be placed through a specialist technology consultancy acting as the delivery partner, embedded within the client's environment and operating across a six-stream IT transformation programme. The DevOps team itself is 20-30 engineers, a mix of onshore and offshore, with significant third-party managed service involvement that needs to be scrutinised and challenged. The person above you in this programme is well-connected with the client and on-site regularly, so you won't be going in without support.
You'll be responsible for analysing incidents and outages, understanding what the team actually does versus what it should be doing, defining what a well run DevOps function looks like at this scale, and presenting that clearly to senior stakeholders including at CIO level. This isn't a maintenance role dressed up. It's a genuine diagnostic and improvement mandate.
What They're Looking For:
- Azure (hands-on, enterprise-scale; AWS-only profiles won't be considered)
- CI/CD tools: Jenkins, GitLab CI or equivalent
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Terraform or similar
- 10 years across DevOps engineering and tooling/automation disciplines
- Proven track record leading geographically dispersed teams including offshore
- Experience diagnosing underperforming DevOps functions and building credible improvement roadmaps
- Strong stakeholder communication up to CIO level, including translating DevOps into business language
- Comfortable operating in formal, structured enterprise environments (financial services/insurance background a plus)
What You'll Work With:
- Azure PaaS and IaaS platforms
- ServiceNow (incident management, problem management, governance)
- CI/CD pipeline tooling and SDLC governance frameworks
- Third-party vendor management and SLA accountability
- Service Operations reporting and monitoring
- Agile delivery methods and BAU operations management
Nice to Haves:
- Microsoft Azure or ITIL/Agile certifications
- Experience in FCA-regulated environments
- Background working alongside or managing large managed service providers
- Exposure to FinOps or cloud cost optimisation programmes
Why Join / What You'll Be Walking Into:
This programme has clear executive sponsorship and a very specific goal: reduce third-party reliance, restore governance, and make DevOps visible and accountable to the business. Your findings will go directly to senior leadership, and the right person will have real influence over what the function looks like going forward.
The consultancy around you is well-embedded with the client. There are five other stream leads working in parallel across the programme, and the engagement lead is on-site regularly. You'll have context and support from day one.
If this sounds like the kind of role you've been looking for, get in touch and I'll give you a proper run-through before you apply.
Head of DevOps (Contract) | Azure, CI/CD, IaC | Insurance Group Transformation Programme
