About this Lead DevOps Engineer role at Cencora
Our team members are at the heart of everything we do. At Cencora, we are united in our responsibility to create healthier futures, and every person here is essential to us being able to deliver on that purpose. If you want to make a difference at the center of health, come join our innovative company and help us improve the lives of people and animals everywhere. Apply today!
Job Details
Modern tech stack. Cloud-native platforms. Mature engineering teams. Interesting work. Healthy work/life balance.
If you’re looking for a role where you can work with modern tools, help shape cloud-native platforms at scale, and join a team that combines strong technical expertise with a genuinely supportive culture, this could be a great fit.
At Cencora / PharmaLex, you’ll join mature engineering teams working on meaningful platforms that support global pharma consulting services. You’ll have the opportunity to work on interesting technical challenges, influence platform direction, and drive improvements across infrastructure, delivery, automation, and engineering practices — all within an environment that values collaboration, quality, and sustainable pace.
We are hiring a Lead DevOps Engineer to own and lead our DevOps capability. This role can be mostly remote in the UK, with monthly travel to our Colchester office.
About the role
This is a leadership role for someone who enjoys broad technical ownership and wants to make a visible impact across a fast-moving engineering estate.
You’ll lead the DevOps function, helping teams ship software faster, safer, and more reliably by evolving our Azure infrastructure, strengthening our CI/CD pipelines, driving automation, and embedding DevOps and shift-left practices across the organisation.
A key part of this role is our heavily Kubernetes-based environment. We are looking for someone with strong, hands-on Kubernetes and containerisation experience in production, who can lead confidently in an organisation where Kubernetes is a core part of the platform.
Just as importantly, we are looking for someone whose experience shows the right breadth of scope. This role suits somebody who is comfortable supporting many applications and services in a dynamic environment — not someone who has only specialised in one narrow area, and not someone who has moved too far away from hands-on technical leadership.
What you’ll be doing
Define and drive the DevOps vision using Agile best practices
Set direction, standards, and engineering best practices for the team
Lead the design of scalable, secure, and reliable infrastructure and delivery pipelines
Build, improve, and maintain CI/CD pipelines across multiple applications and services
Own and evolve Azure-based cloud infrastructure
Lead in a Kubernetes-first environment, ensuring resilient and scalable platform operations
Drive automation and advocate for shift-left ways of working
Align DevOps initiatives with engineering, product, and business goals
Mentor engineers, support knowledge sharing, and help develop team capability
Promote high-quality engineering across teams
Facilitate strong collaboration between technical and non-technical stakeholders
#LI-AT2
.
What we’re looking for
Essential
Significant experince in DevOps, Cloud, or Platform Engineering roles
Experience in a technical leadership or team lead capacity
Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure, including VMs, networking, storage, AKS, App Services, and Key Vault
Deep, hands-on Kubernetes experience in production
Strong experience with containerisation in real-world engineering environments
Strong infrastructure-as-code experience, especially Terraform and Helm
Strong CI/CD experience, ideally with Azure DevOps
Coding or scripting ability in at least one of: Golang, Python, PowerShell, or Bash
Strong understanding of networking, security, and cloud architecture
Experience working in cross-functional engineering teams
Familiarity with observability platforms
You’ll likely be a strong fit if you:
Have experience working across a broad application landscape, rather than in one highly restricted area
Are comfortable balancing technical leadership with hands-on delivery
Thrive in a fast-moving environment with multiple applications, services, and priorities
Have the credibility and experience to lead in a business where Kubernetes is heavily embedded
Enjoy enabling other engineers and improving the overall developer experience
Nice to have
Cloudflare / Edge / WAF experience
LLM experience
Location
Candidates must be based in:
The United Kingdom, with ability to travel to Colchester occasionally
What Cencora offers
Benefit offerings outside the US may vary by country and will be aligned to local market practice. The eligibility and effective date may differ for some benefits and for team members covered under collective bargaining agreements.
Full timeAffiliated Companies
Affiliated Companies: PhlexGlobal LimitedEqual Employment Opportunity
Cencora is committed to providing equal employment opportunity without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, age, disability, veteran status or membership in any other class protected by federal, state or local law.
The company’s continued success depends on the full and effective utilization of qualified individuals. Therefore, harassment is prohibited and all matters related to recruiting, training, compensation, benefits, promotions and transfers comply with equal opportunity principles and are non-discriminatory.
Cencora is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities during the employment process which are consistent with legal requirements. If you wish to request an accommodation while seeking employment, please call 888.692.2272 or email [email protected]. We will make accommodation determinations on a request-by-request basis. Messages and emails regarding anything other than accommodations requests will not be returned
