Principal DevOps Engineer

About the Position

We're partnering with a large US financial services company to source a Principal DevOps Engineer to join them on a contract basis in County Galway, Ireland. We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Principal DevOps Engineer to lead the evolution of cloud, platform engineering, and operational excellence capabilities. In this role, you will provide technical leadership in the design, implementation, and adoption of modern DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), GitOps, and AI-powered engineering practices.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership in the design, implementation, and adoption of modern DevOps practices.
• Drive the adoption of GitOps and Platform Engineering practices to improve deployment reliability, scalability, governance, and developer experience.
• Partner closely with development, architecture, infrastructure, and security teams to build highly scalable, resilient, and observable platforms.
• Improve developer productivity through self-service capabilities, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and AI-driven operational excellence.
• Establish and promote engineering standards, platform consistency, and operational excellence across development and SRE organizations.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field; master’s degree preferred.
• 9+ years of hands-on experience designing, implementing, and supporting enterprise-scale CI/CD platforms and distributed systems.
• 3+ years of experience building and operating cloud-native solutions in AWS, including infrastructure modernization and migration initiatives.
• 3+ years of software development experience utilizing Python, Java, or Node.js, with a strong focus on automation and software engineering best practices.
• 2+ years of hands-on GitOps experience leveraging platforms such as Argo CD, Flux CD, or equivalent solutions.
• Strong experience with Kubernetes and containerized application platforms.
• Experience designing and operating highly available, distributed, service-oriented architectures.
• Experience building and operating Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) and enabling self-service engineering capabilities.
• Experience utilizing AI-assisted engineering tools such as GitHub Copilot, Amazon Q, or equivalent technologies.
• Strong automation skills using Python, Shell scripting, and related technologies.
• Deep expertise in CI/CD practices, software configuration management, automated testing, code quality analysis, and deployment automation utilizing tools such as Jenkins, Ansible, and Docker.
• Hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code frameworks including Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, and Ansible.
• Strong understanding of cloud-native architectures, DevOps principles, SRE practices, and platform engineering.
• Advanced Kubernetes administration and application delivery experience.
• Experience with GitOps methodologies, including declarative infrastructure, automated reconciliation, progressive delivery, and version-controlled operations.
• Hands-on experience with modern observability platforms including Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch, Splunk, and OpenTelemetry.
• Strong expertise in monitoring, logging, alerting, instrumentation, and performance engineering for large-scale distributed systems.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to influence both technical and executive stakeholders.
• Proven ability to collaborate effectively across diverse engineering teams and organizational boundaries.

Nice to Have

• Experience applying AI and AIOps capabilities across software delivery, automation, monitoring, and operational workflows.
• Familiarity with Agentic AI concepts, autonomous workflows, and AI-driven operational automation.
• Understanding AI governance, security, compliance, and responsible AI practices.
• Experience leveraging data analytics and visualization tools to drive operational insights.
• Passion for continuous learning and adopting emerging technologies and best practices.

We Offer

• Opportunity to work with a leading US financial services company.
• Be part of a team driving innovation in cloud, platform engineering, and operational excellence.
• Collaborate with a diverse and talented team of engineers and technical leaders.
• Potential for professional growth and development in a dynamic environment.

About the Company

Cpl is a leading recruitment and managed services company, committed to helping individuals and organizations achieve their career goals. We partner with top companies to source and place talent, and provide managed services to support business needs.

Click 'Apply Now' to submit your resume and start your application. Alternatively, you can send your resume directly to [email protected]