Principal DevOps Engineer in Woking

IDBS helps BioPharma organisations unlock the potential of AI/ML to improve the lives of patients. As a trusted long-term partner to 80% of the top 20 global BioPharma companies, IDBS delivers powerful cloud software and services specifically designed to meet the evolving needs of the BioPharma sector.

IDBS, a Danaher company, leverages 35 years of scientific informatics expertise to help organisations design, execute and orchestrate processes, manage, contextualise and structure data and gain valuable insights throughout the product lifecycle, from R&D through manufacturing. Known for its signature IDBS E‑WorkBook software, IDBS has extended its flexible, scalable solutions to the IDBS Polar and PIMS cloud platforms to help scientists make smarter decisions with assured confidence in both GxP and non‑GxP environments.

Do you want to join a DevOps team that keeps our cloud platform running at its best? We manage a high‑availability Linux environment in AWS and empower development teams with the tools, automation, and CI/CD pipelines they rely on every day. Our DevOps team helps engineers build reliable software fast by providing shared infrastructure and strong SRE practices that ensure consistency, efficiency, and scalability.

As a Principal DevOps Engineer, you’ll lead the design and operation of our AWS/Linux platform, improving reliability and scalability, and drive faster, safer deployments. You’ll shape the technical roadmap, elevate DevOps standards, and deliver measurable impact from reducing MTTR to increasing deployment frequency and improving consistency across environments.

What you’ll get you doing:

• Lead the technical roadmap by partnering with Architecture and feature teams, influencing key design decisions and driving modern tooling and best practices.
• Optimise and operate scalable AWS infrastructure, ensuring strong performance, resilience, and cost efficiency through effective AWS Cost Management and FinOps practices.
• Drive DevOps excellence by building and evolving CI/CD pipelines, automation, and Infrastructure as Code to enable fast, safe, and reliable software delivery.
• Champion modern engineering practices by evaluating and introducing new technologies, running proofs of concept, and uplifting standards across the organisation.
• Mentor and support engineering teams, while ensuring platform reliability, compliance, and participating in on‑call/out‑of‑hour support when needed.

Here is what success in this role looks like:

• Confidently operate and improve AWS/Linux platforms, delivering secure, scalable, and highly available systems while guiding teams on best practices and architectural decisions.
• Drive cloud cost efficiency through strong FinOps practices, reducing waste and optimising workloads with rightsizing, storage lifecycle policies, and AWS Savings Plans or Reserved Instances.
• Deliver high‑quality IaaC using Terraform (and/or Puppet for configuration management), creating modular, reusable, and policy‑compliant IaaC that enables consistent, multi‑environment provisioning.
• Design and run production‑grade Kubernetes environments covering Helm, RBAC, networking/ingress, secrets management, scaling strategies, and deployment patterns—to deliver reliable, scalable, cloud‑native infrastructure.
• Build and maintain robust CI/CD workflows using Git and/or Jenkins, including automated testing, security scanning, and environment promotion, resulting in improved deployment frequencies, change failure rates, etc.
• Automate operational and developer workflows using Bash, Python, or Java, eliminating manual effort and enabling self‑service capabilities that empower engineering teams.
• Elevate engineering capability by mentoring others, improving documentation, and influencing platform‑wide standards, ensuring best practices are embedded across teams and reflected in everyday development and operations.

It would be a plus if you also possess previous experience in:

• Hands‑on experience with enterprise and cloud‑native databases such as Oracle, MySQL, MongoDB, or PostgreSQL, supporting deeper insight into platform behaviour and performance.
• A strong passion for open‑source technologies, with the ability to evaluate, advocate, and introduce community‑driven tools that strengthen engineering capabilities.
• Relevant AWS certifications (e.g., AWS Solutions Architect – Associate/Professional or DevOps Engineer – Professional), demonstrating advanced cloud proficiency and architectural depth.

Flexible Work Arrangement:

At IDBS, we believe in designing a better, more sustainable workforce. We recognise the benefits of flexible working arrangements for eligible roles and are committed to providing enriching careers, no matter the work arrangement. This position is eligible for a flexible work arrangement in which you can work part‑time at the Company location identified above and part‑time remotely from your home. Additional information about this work arrangement will be provided by your interview team.

Explore the flexibility and challenge that working for IDBS can provide.

Additional Information:

Join our winning team today. Together, we’ll accelerate the real‑life impact of tomorrow’s science and technology. We partner with customers across the globe to help them solve their most complex challenges, architecting solutions that bring the power of science to life.