Senior DevSecOps Engineer

The DevSecOps Engineer at Shield AI is responsible for designing, building, securing, and operating the software delivery infrastructure required to develop and deploy advanced autonomous systems for defence applications.

This role sits at the intersection of software engineering, platform engineering, cyber security, and defence systems engineering. The DevSecOps Engineer works alongside autonomy, software, systems, integration, and test engineers to create secure and reliable development environments and delivery pipelines that enable teams to rapidly develop, integrate, test, and deploy mission critical software.

The ideal candidate has a strong software and platform engineering background combined with significant experience operating within UK defence environments. They have a strong understanding of the UK Ministry of Defence/NATO approach to DevSecOps, Secure by Design, cyber risk management, security assurance, and the delivery of software into classified and operational environments.

What You’ll Do

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• Design, build, and operate secure development and deployment infrastructure for Shield AI autonomy and defence programmes.
• Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines that enable rapid, repeatable, and secure delivery of autonomy and mission software.
• Embed security throughout the software development lifecycle, ensuring security controls, testing, evidence, and assurance are integrated into engineering workflows rather than treated as separate activities.
• Apply UK MOD Secure by Design principles throughout the development lifecycle and help engineering teams understand and meet their responsibilities for cyber security and technical assurance.
• Work closely with software, autonomy, systems, cyber security, integration, and test engineers to establish development environments that support rapid engineering while meeting defence security requirements.
• Design and maintain development and deployment environments spanning cloud, on premises infrastructure, laboratory environments, simulation, hardware in the loop, and operational platforms.
• Enable secure software development and deployment across different security classifications and appropriately segmented development environments.
• Implement automated security controls within CI/CD pipelines, including static analysis, dependency scanning, container scanning, secrets detection, software composition analysis, vulnerability management, and policy enforcement.
• Champion a DevSecOps culture where software engineers take ownership of the security, reliability, deployability, and operational performance of the systems they develop.

Required Qualifications

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• BS or MS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Cyber Security, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of experience in DevOps, DevSecOps, platform engineering, site reliability engineering, software engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Significant experience delivering software or digital capabilities within UK defence or another highly regulated national security environment.
• Strong understanding of the UK Ministry of Defence/NATO approach to DevSecOps and Secure by Design, including the integration of cyber security and risk management throughout the capability lifecycle.
• Experience applying MOD security policies, security assurance processes, and technical security requirements to software intensive defence programmes.
• Experience developing and operating CI/CD pipelines using modern source control, build, test, artefact management, and deployment technologies.
• Strong understanding of Infrastructure as Code, configuration management, containerisation, and infrastructure automation
• Experience with technologies such as Git, GitLab or GitHub, or equivalent tooling.

Desirable Qualifications

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• Experience supporting DevSecOps, software delivery, or digital engineering activities across NATO nations or multinational defence programmes.
• Understanding of DevSecOps approaches, security frameworks, and software assurance practices used by other NATO nations, particularly the United States and European NATO partners.