Principal DevOps Engineer

Company Description IFS is a billion-dollar revenue company with 7000+ employees on all continents. Our leading AI technology is the backbone of our award-winning enterprise software solutions, enabling our customers to be their best when it really matters–at the Moment of Service™. Our commitment to internal AI adoption has allowed us to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, ensuring our colleagues can unlock their creativity and productivity, and our solutions are always cutting-edge. At IFS, we’re flexible, we’re innovative, and we’re focused not only on how we can engage with our customers but on how we can make a real change and have a worldwide impact. We help solve some of society’s greatest challenges, fostering a better future through our agility, collaboration, and trust. We celebrate diversity and understand our responsibility to reflect the diverse world we work in. We are committed to promoting an inclusive workforce that fully represents the many different cultures, backgrounds, and viewpoints of our customers, our partners, and our communities. As a truly international company serving people from around the globe, we realize that our success is tantamount to the respect we have for those different points of view. By joining our team, you will have the opportunity to be part of a global, diverse environment; you will be joining a winning team with a commitment to sustainability; and a company where we get things done so that you can make a positive impact on the world. We’re looking for innovative and original thinkers to work in an environment where you can #MakeYourMoment so that we can help others make theirs. With the power of our AI-driven solutions, we empower our team to change the status quo and make a real difference. If you want to change the status quo, we’ll help you make your moment. Join Team Purple. Join IFS. Job Description About the role We are looking for a Principal DevOps Engineer to own and evolve the core infrastructure that underpins our cloud‑native, AI‑enabled SaaS platforms. This role is about building platforms that scale, not firefighting. You will design, operate, and continuously improve a secure, highly available Kubernetes‑based platform that enables product engineering teams to deploy, operate, and evolve services safely and independently. You will work closely with software engineers, product teams, and security stakeholders to embed best‑in‑class DevOps and platform engineering practices across the organisation. Mission • Build and operate secure, scalable, highly available cloud infrastructure • Enable product teams through automation, self‑service, and clear standards • Raise the bar on reliability, security, observability, and deployment quality • Act as a technical leader across platform and infrastructure initiatives What success looks like You will be accountable for outcomes such as: • Highly available, fault‑tolerant platforms • All containerised services are deployed with appropriate replication, resilience, and resource limits • Workloads are designed for multi‑zone availability and safe failure modes • Zero‑downtime, high‑quality delivery • CI/CD pipelines support safe deployment patterns (e.g. rolling, canary, fast rollback) • Deployment‑related incidents are eliminated or rapidly mitigated • Empowered engineering teams • Engineers can diagnose and resolve the majority of platform‑related issues independently • Clear standards, tooling, and automation reduce cognitive load and friction • Strong security posture • Infrastructure and workloads follow security‑by‑default principles • Vulnerabilities are proactively identified, prioritised, and remediated • Platform security tooling is continuously maintained and improved • Comprehensive observability • All critical services are monitored with meaningful alerts and dashboards • Teams have access to self‑service monitoring and alerting capabilities Key responsibilities • Design, build, and operate cloud infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code • Own and evolve Kubernetes platforms, including workload standards and deployment models • Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines and GitOps workflows • Embed security best practices across infrastructure, pipelines, and runtime environments • Improve platform reliability, monitoring, and incident response workflows • Act as a technical leader and mentor for engineers using the platform • Partner with product and engineering teams to anticipate future platform needs Why join us? • Own and shape a modern platform engineering capability • Work on real production systems supporting AI‑enabled SaaS products • High trust, high autonomy engineering culture • Opportunity to influence platform strategy as the organisation scales Qualifications Essential skills and experience • Experience running production platforms on public cloud environments, with recent hands-on GCP experience being mandatory. • Proven experience building and operating cloud‑native platforms at scale • Strong hands‑on experience with: • Kubernetes & containerised workloads • Infrastructure as Code (e.g. Terraform) • CI/CD pipelines and GitOps‑style delivery • Deep understanding of: • High availability, fault tolerance, and scaling strategies • Secure infrastructure design and operational security practices • Strong troubleshooting skills across distributed systems • Ability to explain complex technical concepts to non‑specialist audiences • Exposure to AI/ML or LLM‑based workloads in production environments Technologies you’ll work with • Google Cloud Platform (GCP) • Kubernetes (GKE), Docker • Terraform • Git‑based CI/CD pipelines • GitOps tooling (e.g. Argo CD) • Observability tooling (metrics, logging, alerting) • Modern AI‑enabled workloads and services Nice to have • Experience with service mesh technologies (e.g. Istio) • Experience with Kubernetes Gateway API or modern ingress patterns • Familiarity with Redis, PostgreSQL, or managed cloud data services Additional Information We embrace flexibility and hybrid work opportunities to support diverse needs and lifestyles, while also valuing inclusive workplace experiences. By fostering a sense of community, we drive innovation, strengthen connections, and nurture belonging. Our commitment ensures you can work in a way that suits you best, while also engaging with colleagues to share ideas and build meaningful relationships.