Lead Kubernetes DevOps Engineer - AI / API Platform

Job Summary

Lead the agile solution design, deployment & ongoing optimization & evolution of enterprise wide technology products and services (full stack engineering & ownership / control) in low complexity environments.

Product & Service Direction Setting, Solution Design & Performance Management

• Work with the CIO & business product owners to define the product & technical strategy (Full Stack – End to End)
• Act as the single point of partnership & assume responsibility for managing the senior business interface (product owner) relationship
• Assume one stop shop accountability for the delivery of the product & solutions (risk cannot be outsourced to vendors)
• Apply design thinking practices to deliver architecturally sound technical product & service solutions (and explain / guide / coach others on this architecture holistically and technically)
• Lead & facilitate the design of the product & or service solution blueprints aligned to the organization strategy (Short, Medium & Long Term)
• Collaborate across the tech value chain (CSO, CTO, etc.) to guide the business on the appropriate technical solution (cost to value) & the range of strategic technical choices to be made
• Lead the detailed scoping, prioritisation & integration planning for the design & deployment of products & services with & across multiple stakeholder groups (Front End, Back End & Integration) – (aligned to solution blueprints)
• Meaningfully contribute & ensure solutions align to the design & direction of the Group Architecture standards, principles, preferences & practices. Short term deployment must align to strategic long term delivery.
• Meaningfully contribute & ensure solutions align to the design and direction of the Group Infrastructure standards and practices e.g. OLA’s, IAAS, PAAS, SAAS, Containerisation etc.
• Strategically & operationally monitor the performance of products and services (all applications) – ensuring ongoing optimization & cost to value for our businesses (think bank wide)

DevOps (with deep knowledge & understanding of context within which we develop architecturally & infrastructurally)

• Operate and harden the production EKS estate hosting API gateway, AI agent runtimes, and integration services
• Own Kong Konnect end-to-end — control + data plane, plugins, LLM/MCP traffic policies
• Run APIOps for Kong: decK, OpenAPI-driven pipelines, Spectral linting, GitOps promotion of specs and config
• Operate the MuleSoft Anypoint estate (350+ APIs) and lead consolidation onto Kong Konnect
• Embed supply-chain security: image scanning (Trivy), signing (Cosign), SBOMs, admission policy (OPA / Kyverno)
• Run runtime security and CIS hardening: Falco, audit logging, kube-bench
• Own the GitOps delivery pattern (Argo CD or Flux) for application and platform manifests
• Coach senior engineers across squads and uphold Group architectural standards

Delivery Management (where there is a specific product / service you manage)

• With fluency in the deployment of agile methodologies, resource & manage the appropriate number and nature (skill & capability) of squad based teams to execute on both Run & Change elements of delivery
• Work in collaboration with transformation & change teams for effective resourcing and delivery management of various programmes at all levels (SI, BU etc.)
• Ensure agile practices are implemented and sustained for effective delivery to business e.g. RETRO’s etc.
• Positively & proactively manage product owner relationships including building product owner technical capability to enable balanced & best fit decision making
• Proactively engage with & partner CTO, CSO, SE, Risk and broader enablement functions to drive alignment & leading practice in technology design & deployment

Must have

• Full Kubestronaut profile — KCNA, KCSA, CKAD, CKA, CKS (all active) — non-negotiable
• AWS Certified Developer – Associate (active)
• 4+ years engineering experience with production Kubernetes at scale
• Production experience with Kong Konnect (or Kong Gateway / Enterprise) and APIOps tooling
• Production experience with MuleSoft Anypoint Platform (CloudHub, RTF, API Manager, DataWeave)
• AWS expert (EKS, IAM, KMS, VPC) — Azure / GCP equivalents acceptable
• Regulated-industry delivery: banking, insurance, or healthcare

Nice to have

• AWS Solutions Architect Professional / DevOps Engineer Professional
• Kong or MuleSoft certifications
• LLM / AI workload experience: Bedrock, vector DBs, RAG, agent runtimes, MCP
• Service mesh in production (Istio, Linkerd, Cilium)