Head of DevSecOps - Fixed Term Contract in London

This role is advertised on a 12 month fixed term contract. Would you relish the challenge of embedding a true DevSecOps culture across an ambitious, tech‐driven organisation? Are you passionate about leveraging automation and cloud innovation to deliver secure, scalable, and high‐performing services? Can you inspire technical excellence while balancing innovation, governance, and continuous improvement? If so, we would love to hear from you!

At Livestock Information Ltd, our mission is to be an outstanding service provider of livestock data, empowering government, industry, and farmers to effectively manage disease and infection control, whilst enhancing productivity and innovation in agriculture. To achieve this, we need great people, who share in our values.

As the Head of DevSecOps, you will lead the strategy, implementation, and continuous improvement of our IT operations and security management across cloud‐based solutions — primarily within Azure and Microsoft 365 environments. You will be responsible for ensuring the stability, security, and efficiency of our IT services, safeguarding digital assets, maintaining compliance with relevant industry standards (including ISO 27001), and supporting seamless DevOps practices across the organisation.

The ideal candidate will champion a DevSecOps mindset, embedding security and automation into every stage of our development and operational processes. You will collaborate closely with cross‐functional teams to integrate robust security controls from the outset, enhance processes and playbooks, and strengthen our overall security posture.

The salary for this role is £70,000.

• Strategy & Leadership: Defining, championing, and executing the company's DevOps and cloud roadmap, ensuring alignment with business objectives emphasising system optimisation and pioneering innovation.
• Team Management: Leading, mentoring, and nurturing a high‐performing team of DevOps, Identity and Integration Engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, continuous improvement, and technical excellence.
• Azure Cloud Services Management: Overseeing the design, implementation, and optimisation of our secure, scalable, and cost‐efficient infrastructure. Driving adoption services and ensuring compliance to all Disaster Recovery Plans.
• Automation & CI/CD: Instilling and enforcing Infrastructure‐as‐Code (IaC) principles. Continuously improving and automating our CI/CD pipelines to enable fast, reliable, and frequent software releases.
• Site Reliability: Establishing and tracking key reliability metrics (SLAs). Overseeing monitoring, logging, alerting, incident response, disaster recovery, and capacity planning to maintain the availability, performance, and security of live services.
• Facilitating Business Change: Supporting new business initiatives and service improvements implementing both Waterfall and Agile methodologies, utilising Azure DevOps for comprehensive backlog management, pipeline integration, and Test Plans.
• Security & Compliance: Integrating security best practices into the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC). Ensuring compliance with relevant industry standards (e.g., GDPR, ISO 27001, SOC 2) critical for an enterprise SaaS company dealing with sensitive client data.
• Cost Optimisation (FinOps): Managing cloud spending effectively, identifying and implementing cost‐saving measures without compromising performance or reliability.
• Continuous Service Improvement: Actively seeking out opportunities for enhancement and engaging in collaboration across Service teams to support the Service Continuous Service Improvement Programme. This initiative is dedicated to elevating service performance, reducing operational costs, minimising technical debt, and bolstering security measures.

• Proven IT Operations Leadership: Demonstrable experience in managing complex IT operations, with a strong emphasis on cloud services and support management.
• Expertise in Cloud Technologies: Extensive hands‐on experience with Azure and M365, from architecture, design, build and test, release to service management.
• Operational Excellence: A track record of enhancing IT service delivery, managing change portfolios, and upholding IT security protocols and build standards.
• Strategic Vision: Adept at translating IT capabilities into strategic business advantages.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Skilled at building strong relationships and influencing effectively across organisational boundaries to foster collaboration.
• Line management experience: Experienced in leading internal teams and managing contract service providers, including Azure DevSecOps engineers, service architects, full‐stack software engineers, test engineers, delivery managers, scrum masters, and business analysts.
• Commitment to Excellence: Dedicated to driving innovation, embedding best practices, and upholding the highest standards of compliance and security.

• A fully remote and flexible working set up
• 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service up to maximum of 30 days (plus Bank Holidays)
• 1 Privilege Day
• 4 x annual salary Life Assurance
• Market leading pension scheme through Legal & General
• Enhanced Family Friendly Policies
• Excellent learning, training, and career development opportunities
• 24/7 access to our Employee Assistance Programme
• A diverse and inclusive culture where everyone is respected and valued

To apply for this role, you will need to submit a CV and answer some pre‐screening questions. The interview and assessment process for this role will involve a telephone interview with our Talent Team, followed by a first stage and a final stage interview. Interviews will be conducted either remotely via MS Teams or face to face.

If we need to make a reasonable adjustment so that you can complete your application, please contact us as soon as possible by emailing talent@livestockinformation.org.uk before the closing date to discuss your needs. The closing date for this role is 4pm on Monday, 10th November. Applications received after the closing date will not be considered. Please note that we may close the advert early if we receive a high volume of applications.

We approach our work with TACT; we are T transparent, A accountable, C committed and we work as a T team. We are transparent together, embracing honesty and building trust. We are accountable to the industry and strive for the best possible solutions for the communities we serve. We drive change with passion, commitment and enthusiasm to deliver a great service to the livestock industry. We work kindly and cohesively which allows us to support each other in our personal and strategic goals.

We're a fully remote organisation however, our roles are UK‐based and can only be performed within the UK. We come together in person once a quarter for our All Hands events to connect, collaborate, and strengthen relationships, with occasional additional team meet‐ups.

At Livestock Information, we value diversity and believe that every individual brings different strengths. We understand that not everyone may possess every single skill outlined in this job description, but if you believe you have a solid skill set that enables you to excel in this position then we really encourage you to apply.

If you feel your application has not been treated in a fair and open manner or if you are dissatisfied with any of your interactions during the recruitment process and you wish to make a complaint, you should contact our Talent team via email talent@livestockinformation.org.uk.

Livestock Information Ltd. cannot sponsor work visas at this time. Livestock Information Ltd. does not discriminate based on race, sex, colour, religion, age, national origin, marital status, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other reason prohibited by law in provision of employment opportunities and benefits. Livestock Information Ltd. does not accept unsolicited CVs from any source other than directly from a candidate. Any unsolicited CV's not originating directly from a candidate and sent to Livestock Information Ltd or any Livestock Information Ltd employees, including unsolicited CVs sent to a Livestock Information Ltd mailing address or email address, are rejected. Livestock Information Ltd will NOT pay a fee for any placement resulting from the receipt of an unsolicited CV. Livestock Information Ltd considers any candidate for whom the recruiter has submitted an unsolicited CV referred by the company free of any fees.