Director of DevOps (Manchester/Cheltenham - Hybrid)

About Finova

Finova is the UK’s largest financial services technology provider, supporting one in every five mortgages nationwide. Our agile, cloud-native solutions enable over 60 banks, building societies, specialist lenders, equity release providers and a network of 2,400+ brokers to stay ahead in a competitive market.

Built on open architecture and backed by deep industry expertise, our platform is designed to scale. Each year, we process over £50 billion in loans, manage nearly £50 billion in savings, and support the digital servicing of more than 650,000 UK borrower accounts. Be part of a team that’s driving innovation, enabling growth and shaping the future of UK lending.

For Lenders

Finova offers a flexible, modular technology suite designed to help lenders move faster, scale efficiently and deliver standout digital experiences.

Financial Institutions use Finova to launch products faster, process applications up to 50% more efficiently and reduce operational costs — all while staying fully compliant in a fast-moving market.

About the Role:

• Build and own a modern DevOps culture, including the right tooling, automation, and support systems.
• Champion a "you build it, you run it" approach — ensuring safe, secure, and compliant delivery practices.
• Lead and develop an exceptional SRE function focused on stability, observability, and continuous improvement.
• Drive cloud excellence, maximising performance, reliability, and value through strong FinOps and vendor management.
• Oversee live environments, ensuring full traceability, rapid service restoration, and proactive incident prevention.
• Create scalable DevOps strategies and architectures that support all engineering teams and legacy platforms effectively.
• Empower and upskill teams, fostering an enabling culture that shares best practices and builds internal capability.
• Monitor and report on performance, using data and metrics to drive efficiency, quality, and operational insight.
• Stay ahead of emerging technologies and trends to continually enhance our software delivery capabilities.

About you:

• Proven leadership in technology and delivery, overseeing DevOps, SRE, and platform engineering functions.
• Expert knowledge of DevOps practices, including automation, CI/CD pipelines, and modern tooling for build and release management.
• Strong understanding of cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, or GCP) — with the ability to optimise performance, reliability, and cost.
• Experience implementing and leading a DevOps culture, including ownership of tooling, support systems, and process design.
• Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) expertise, ensuring platforms operate safely, efficiently, and with minimal downtime.
• FinOps (cloud financial management) experience, ensuring cost-effectiveness and return on cloud investments.
• Operational excellence in live environment management, including incident response, traceability, and service restoration.
• Experience designing and managing DevOps architecture, tools, and technologies across large-scale or complex systems.
• Strong collaboration with cloud vendors to leverage new technologies and optimise system capabilities.
• Ability to foster an enabling culture, empowering teams with the right skills, tools, and autonomy to succeed.
• Pragmatic approach to legacy systems, knowing when “good enough” is the right approach for stability and progress.
• Data-driven mindset, using metrics and monitoring to report on efficiency, performance, and outages.
• Strong coaching and mentoring capability, designing and leading DevOps and SRE training programs.
• Continuous improvement orientation, staying up to date with emerging technologies, trends, and best practices.

What We Offer:

Flexible Working: 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, bank holiday trading and holiday purchase options, the opportunity to work from anywhere in the world for up to 4 weeks per year, and a flexible hybrid working policy.

Looking After You: Life Assurance, Group Income Protection, Private Medical Insurance, a pension scheme via Salary Exchange, an Employee Assistance Programme, and access to a Virtual GP.

Family-Friendly Policies: Enhanced maternity and paternity pay, as well as paid time off for fertility treatments and pregnancy loss.

Extra Perks: Cycle to Work Scheme, discounts on shops, restaurants, and gym memberships, free fresh fruit daily, and opportunities to join colleague networks and social groups.

Giving Back: One paid volunteering day annually and the Give-As-You-Earn scheme to support your favourite charities.

Equal Opportunity Statement

We value diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. If you’re passionate about this role but don’t meet all the criteria, please reach out—we’d love to discuss how your skills and experiences align with our needs.