Job Description

The Lead DevOps Engineer provides technical leadership across engineering teams, driving the delivery of secure, reliable, and high-quality digital services. As a Lead DevOps Engineer, you will:



Shape the DevOps strategy for the product line. Coach and lead teams in the design, implementation, and optimization of CI/CD pipelines, cloud architectures, and automation solutions. Champion best practices in testing, quality assurance, and continuous improvement. o Drive modern DevOps practices, tools, and standards to enhance service reliability, scalability, and security. Guide teams in infrastructure-as-code, configuration management, and automated deployment strategies. Lead knowledge sharing to embed best practice and build team capability. Apply a logical, analytical approach to complex problem-solving, by identifying root causes and balancing priorities and constraints. Draw on a broad understanding of information systems concepts and practices relevant to the organisation's technology landscape.

The ability to speak Welsh is desirable for this post; Welsh and/or English speakers are equally welcome to apply.



Lead the design and development of cloud-native integration solutions using Python, microservices architecture, and event-driven patterns.



Guide technical direction, architecture, and standards for healthcare data transformation and validation systems.



Oversee the development of robust CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure as Code practices.



Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to deliver secure, user-centred digital services following secure-by-design principles.



Mentor and coach developers, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and technical excellence.



Champion agile methodologies and DevSecOps practices across the team.



Engage with stakeholders to understand requirements and translate them into scalable technical solutions.



Ensure compliance with information security standards and NHS Wales policies for handling patient-identifiable data.



Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) is part of the NHS Wales family and has an important role in changing the way health and care services are delivered through technology and data. The organisation supports frontline staff with modern systems and access to important information about their patients, while empowering the people of Wales to manage their own health through digital NHS Wales services.



Working for DHCW offers lots of employee benefits, including flexible working, a competitive salary, 28 days of annual leave plus Bank Holidays and opportunities for career development. We are committed to recognising and celebrating our staff as the most valuable part of our organisation.



Join our game changing, life-saving team and start making a real difference to health and care services in Wales.



You will be able to find a full Job description and Person Specification attached within the supporting documents or please click "Apply now" to view in Trac



Essential Skills & Experience

Core Development:

Proven Python (3.x) leadership for APIs, system interfaces & data transformation; strong microservices/event-driven patterns;



Dockerised applications.

Cloud & Infrastructure:

Hands-on Azure (Service Bus/message brokers); IaC with Terraform; scalable, resilient cloud-native architectures.

DevSecOps & Quality:

CI/CD (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions); automated testing, static analysis & security scanning; secure-by-design principles & sensitive data handling.

Integration & Standards:

Lifecycle management, integration patterns & data workflows; message validation, schema enforcement & data quality; troubleshooting distributed systems & observability.

Leadership & Collaboration:

Agile team leadership & mentoring; translating complex business needs into scalable solutions.

Desirable:

Healthcare standards (HL7, FHIR, MLLP); Azure Monitor/Application Insights; modern Python tooling (UV, Ruff, MyPy); event-driven/asynchronous processing; ESB-to-cloud migration; Welsh language (Level 1+).