Senior DevOps Engineer in Stoke-on-Trent

Looking to deploy your talents somewhere they’ll truly scale? We are a leading UK debt purchase business focused on helping customers resolve their financial obligations in an ethical and manageable way. We are embarking on a major technological transformation, moving from our traditional data processing environment to a modern, scalable, and resilient event-driven architecture hosted in Microsoft Azure.

What are we looking for?

We are looking for a DevOps Engineer with strong .NET and C# development experience to help modernise, operate, and evolve our platform. This role goes beyond infrastructure and pipelines: you will actively work inside .NET applications, improving telemetry, reliability, deployment patterns, and operational behaviour. You will partner closely with software engineers to upgrade and migrate existing .NET applications, embed observability and resilience into services, and ensure applications run reliably and cost‑effectively across our hybrid Azure and datacentre environment. This is a hands-on role with real ownership, influence over engineering standards, and a clear path toward senior or lead DevOps / Platform Engineering responsibilities.

Why Join Us?

• This is a high-impact engineering role where you will work with experienced technical leaders and grow into a future technical lead.
• Work hands‑on in real production .NET systems, not just pipelines or infrastructure.
• Play a key role in a large‑scale platform modernisation, moving from legacy processing to an event‑driven Azure architecture.
• Own services end‑to‑end — from code and deployment to observability, reliability, and cost.
• Influence engineering standards, tooling, and platform direction across the business.
• Collaborate closely with experienced technical leaders in a team that values clean design, resilience, and craftsmanship.

If you love hands-on coding, owning delivery, and optimising services this could be the role for you.

Key Responsibilities

• .NET Application Engineering & Modernisation
  • Work directly on .NET / C# applications and services, not just infrastructure.
  • Implement telemetry, logging, metrics, and tracing within .NET applications.
  • Improve application health, resilience, and diagnosability through code.
  • Lead and support upgrades and migrations of .NET applications (e.g. framework upgrades, cloud readiness, platform changes).
  • Collaborate with development and infrastructure teams to improve runtime behaviour, startup performance, error handling, and dependency management.
• CI/CD & Deployment Engineering
  • Build and maintain Azure DevOps Pipelines for .NET applications.
  • Improve build, test, and release pipelines to make deployments safer and faster.
  • Support repeatable deployments across hybrid Azure and datacentre environments.
  • Embed quality, security, and operational checks into pipelines.
• Cloud & Infrastructure Engineering
  • Design, build, and maintain Azure and on‑premise infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform).
  • Automate infrastructure provisioning and lifecycle management wherever possible.
  • Ensure infrastructure is secure, scalable, resilient, and aligned with architectural standards.
  • Manage hybrid connectivity, networking, and platform services across cloud and data centre environments.
• Observability, Reliability & Operations
  • Design and implement observability solutions spanning applications and infrastructure.
  • Use monitoring and alerting tools (e.g. Datadog) to identify, diagnose, and prioritise production issues.
  • Implement changes in code, configuration, or infrastructure to prevent issues from re‑occurring.
  • Drive post‑incident learning, ensuring outcomes result in measurable improvements rather than workarounds.
• Leadership Path
  • Mentor junior and mid-level engineers.
  • Contribute to engineering standards, design reviews and solution design.
  • Opportunity to evolve into a Tech Lead role managing a small engineering squad.

Does this sound like you?

• Strong commercial experience with .NET and C#.
• Hands-on experience working inside production applications, not just supporting them.
• Experience upgrading, migrating, or modernising .NET applications or services.
• Strong experience with Microsoft Azure (compute, networking, identity, monitoring).
• Solid experience responding to production alerts and diagnosing issues in distributed systems.
• Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.
• CI/CD experience with Azure DevOps Pipelines.
• Experience supporting hybrid cloud / on‑prem environments.
• Strong understanding of application monitoring, logging, metrics, and tracing.

Desirable

• Azure Application Insights / DataDog / OpenTelemetry experience.
• Experience with Azure services (App Services, Functions, Service Bus).
• FinOps or cloud cost optimisation exposure.
• Scripting (PowerShell, Bash, or similar).
• Experience operating systems in regulated environments.

The Application Timeline

A first stage phone call with the internal talent acquisition team (15-minute call). An interview with Head of Engineering and Director of Systems and Architecture (45 minutes). A technical test (60 minutes). Typically, the average successful applicant will be within this timeline for 2-3 weeks. Please note we will close this role once we have enough applications for the next stages therefore you should submit your application ASAP to avoid any disappointment. If you do not receive a response after 3 weeks of applying, please assume you have been unsuccessful as we may experience a high volume of applications.

Why you should be EXCITED to apply...

• £60,000-£70,000 dependant on experience, PLUS up to 20% of your annual salary, paid as a bonus.
• This role is hybrid and is based at Blackpool or Manchester office. Our Blackpool office is conveniently located a couple of minutes from the M55 and offers free parking. Our Manchester office is located in the heart of the city’s commercial hub with regular social events planned.
• 37.5 hours per week. We offer flexible and hybrid working between our core hours of 8am- 6pm, Monday to Friday.
• The opportunity to complete formal qualifications and learn on the job in a successful, growing organisation.
• And many more benefits to support your wellbeing and professional development.

Apply now! This job has your name all over it. We are an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, veteran, neurodiversity or disability status. If you have any questions or suggestions of how we can assist you in your application due to disability or personal reasons, please email.

PLEASE NOTE - All new employees must undergo a full DBS and Credit Check upon acceptance of a job offer with Perch Group.