Senior DevOps Engineer at Oxford Dynamics, Oxford, £Contract Option

Contract: Permanent or Contract considered

Location: Greater Oxford Area

Working Pattern: Hybrid (2-3 days in office)

Salary: Competitive

A note from the Founders

Oxford Dynamics is at an inflection point.

We operate in some of the most complex and high xe2 stakes environments in the world - defence, national security, AI and robotics. The decisions we make now, will define not just how fast we grow, but who we become.

You will work closely with all the team. You will be trusted with judgment calls. You will influence the business. And you will see the impact of your work every day in the work we do.

If you are excited by ownership, pace and purpose - and by building something that genuinely matters -we would love to hear from you.

Who We Are

Founded in 2020, Oxford Dynamics (OD) is a fast xe2 growing UK deep xe2 tech company developing AI and robotic systems designed to operate in mission xe2 critical environments.

Our flagship AVIS (A Very Intelligent System) AI framework fuses multi xe2 modal data - text, imagery, telemetry and sensor feeds - enabling operators to interrogate complex information at speed and make better decisions under pressure. Our STRIDER robotic platform performs autonomous tasks in hazardous environments, protecting people while extending operational reach.

Our ambition is simple but demanding: to converge AI and robotics so machines can sense, understand and act in complex, real xe2 world environments.

We work with defence and security organisations internationally to help protect nations, infrastructure and lives.

What you will be doing here/ why this role matters

Oxford Dynamics is a small team who rely on a collaborative and positive approach and so the right attitude for this role is equally as important as experience. We are at an important stage and time in our growth, and as a Senior DevOps Engineer you will be an essential part of our success.

We are looking for a seasoned DevOps professional with deep hands-on expertise in AWS, Kubernetes and modern CI/CD who can also drive cloud-native security. You will design, build and audit scalable infrastructure, automate delivery pipelines and champion cost-efficient, highly available platforms while owning key processes that will help OD remain compliant with our various certifications also.

Key Responsibilities

Your responsibilities will include, but not limited to:

• End-to-end cloud ownership - architect, implement and maintain multi-account, multi-region environments using IaC (Terraform, CloudFormation, Helm).
• Platform reliability & automation - manage Kubernetes clusters (EKS/OpenShift), container registries and service meshes; create GitHub Actions / Argo CD pipelines for zero-touch deployments.
• Security hardening - lead security-posture reviews, implement GuardDuty, CloudWatch and IAM best practices.
• SRE & monitoring - uphold SLAs through observability stacks, proactive alerting and performance tuning of distributed systems.
• Collaboration & enablement - automate repetitive tasks, mentor developers and champion DevSecOps best practice across teams.
• Policy & audit ownership - steward the regular audits we need to put in place to remain compliant with industry standards ensuring provenance.
• Backup & DR - design AWS Backup plans, run annual restore drills, maintain RPO/RTO dashboards.
• Capacity & cost optimisation - run the monthly Capacity & Availability Checklist; leverage Compute Optimizer, Savings Plans and Graviton.
• Drift detection & golden images - operate Terraform/Helm drift alerts, AMI & container image pipelines with Inspector v2 scanning.
• Incident & hot-fix response - coordinate emergency changes, rollbacks and post-incident reviews.

What you can bring to Oxford Dynamics

A collaborative and supportive attitude to work is essential for this role. You will be expected to operate at multiple levels within the company, with a strong focus on delivery and attention to detail. You will be comfortable working alone, supporting team members as well as interacting with clients if required.

Qualifications, experience and skills

• Proven experience in DevOps / SRE, with recent focus on AWS cloud engineering.
• Expert in AWS core services (EC2, VPC, IAM, S3, ALB/ELB, CloudFront, ECR/ECS, Elastic Beanstalk, Control Tower) and security tooling (GuardDuty, IAM Identity Center, CloudWatch).
• Strong Kubernetes (EKS/OpenShift) administration, Helm packaging and service-mesh know-how.
• Proficient in IaC (Terraform, Terraform Cloud, CloudFormation), containerisation (Docker, Docker Compose) and Linux systems.
• Solid CI/CD engineering with GitHub Actions and Argo CD.
• Experience integrating SAST and DAST best practices.
• Scripting in Bash and Python or Go for automation.
• Demonstrated success delivering cloud cost-optimisation and high-security solutions for enterprise clients.
• Expertise in implementing SSO across a variety of industry standard software.

Preferred/ Bonus

• Experience with MLOps (Softwares such as Sagemaker, Kubeflow or ZenML).
• Deployment of on-premise Kubernetes.
• Prometheus (or other stacks) observability.
• Experience with AWS Karpenter & Compute Optimizer.
• Compliance literacy - ISO 27001, NIST SSDF/OWASP SAMM, GDPR basics.

Soft skills

• Process-driven, documentation-friendly mindset.
• "Can-do " attitude, quick learner and unafraid of complex challenges.
• Excellent teammate with strong cross-functional communication.

Why This Role?
You will join a culture that values secure, automated delivery and encourages experimentation. If you thrive on scaling cloud platforms, tightening security and shaving milliseconds (and money) off every deployment, we'd love to meet you.

Why Oxford Dynamics?

Join the most exciting growth area in the UK: AI and Robotics! Every member of the Oxford Dynamics team has a major impact on the products and services we provide. Regardless of job title, you'll get to make a real difference and learn from colleagues about all areas of our business.

Benefits include:

• Salary: negotiable based on experience and attitudes
• Rapid career progression with meaningful ownership of core systems

• Opportunity to shape the future of a fast-growing, successful, early-stage business

• Flexible working hours

• Hybrid working model

• Company pension (UK Government NEST scheme) with company contributions at 4%

• Private Healthcare

• 29 days holiday in addition to public holidays (Full Time Equivalent)

Oxford Dynamics is committed to creating an inclusive team experience for all. Regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability, or parental status, we believe our work is at its best when everyone feels free to be their authentic self.