Job Description

Infrastructure / DevOps Engineer - Speculative Talent Pipeline

Department: Engineering

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Bristol, UK

Reporting To: Luke Rank

We’re building the UK's next generation engineering powerhouse, providing critical technology that strengthens national security and resilience.
We specialise in turning advances in sensing, AI, and communications into operational capability for the edge, where connectivity may be degraded or denied. Our work focuses on accelerating the deployment of technology, improving decision-making for frontline teams, and protecting people and critical assets in demanding environments.

Headquartered in Bristol, Rowden employs around 160 people and operates over 20,000 square feet of engineering and manufacturing facilities. We have a growing international footprint and are one of Europe’s fastest-growing engineering businesses.
About the Role

Due to increased demand, we’re building a pipeline for enthusiastic and proactive Engineers who are interested in joining our growing Infrastructure / DevOps team. At Rowden, you’ll be empowered to exploit the latest technologies, cloud services and toolchains to deliver secure, reliable, best-in-class information systems and machine learning services in the Defence, Security and Emergency sectors.

You’ll work across software, infrastructure, and integration boundaries: automating, deploying, and improving complex systems. You’ll use cloud technologies, but you won’t be limited to them.

You can register your interest by applying to this advert, and when a suitable vacancy opens, we’ll get in contact with you.

Candidates must be eligible for SC Clearance.

Key areas of responsibility

As an Infrastructure / DevOps Engineer at Rowden, you’ll join a growing team, focusing on the following key areas of responsibility:

• Building and managing cloud platforms to support ongoing projects.
• Creating reliable systems and services through automation and Infrastructure-as-Code.
• Partnering with development teams to improve their workflows through rigorous testing and release procedures.
• Providing expertise on networks, security and databases.
• Gathering and analysing metrics from operating systems and applications to assist in performance tuning and fault finding.

Key skills, experience and behaviours

Essential skills and experience

• At least 3 years’ experience building/operating systems on cloud, virtualised, or on-prem infrastructure.
• Hands on Infrastructure as Code experience with Terraform or CloudFormation, plus a configuration management and automation tool like Ansible.
• Able to build and deploy versioned containers into a container orchestration service.
• Some coding/scripting experience, comfortable in at least one of: Python, Golang, JavaScript, or Bash.
• Awareness of secure system design and best practice frameworks such as NCSC Cloud Security Principles or equivalent.
• Able to apply engineering thinking to improve reliability, security, and maintainability.

Desirable (not essential)

• Practical understanding of compute, networking, storage, and/or identity management.
• Experience managing multi-account or multi-tenant environments.
• Experience deploying and configuring observability tools and platforms.
• Familiarity with GitOps practices.
• Experience configuring and using Linux systems.

Who we’re looking for

The ideal candidate will have a strong balance of technical skills, experience, and the behaviours that help you succeed in this role:

• You have a real interest in technology and make an effort to keep building your skills.
• You enjoy trying new ideas and tools, and you look for practical ways to apply them.
• You notice problems early, point them out, and help fix them before they grow.
• You bring energy and initiative; if you see something that isn’t working, you want to improve it.
• You keep up with new tools, GitHub projects, and technical blogs to stay informed.
• You think about how systems work as a whole - considering edge cases, failures, and how people use them.
• You work well with others and use your hands-on experience and problem-solving skills to help deliver high quality engineering across the company

Working at Rowden

We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are! We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid-working model, with an average 3 days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part-time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants. Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible. Finally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!