Lead Delivery Engineer (DevOps & CI/CD Leadership)

Leeds, Yorkshire
Sportserve
Sportserveforms part of a remarkable group of B2C sports betting and B2B sportsbook technology companies, focused on delivering first class sports betting experiences and casino products for our users worldwide. Along with Sportion, TechSpirit, Standard Focus and Sportelligent, we are the driving force behind the world renowned sports betting company and our flagship brand, Dafabet. Since launching our global hiring initiative, we now employ over 2,000 people worldwide, offering exciting career paths in Technology, Trading, Operations and Media. We pride ourselves on having a diverse and international culture that embraces the global community and acts locally. We offer office based, hybrid and remote work on permanent and consultancy contracts all over the world, making us the true global employer of choice. What you’ll be getting up to

We are looking to hire a Lead Delivery Engineer (DevOps & CI/CD Leadership) to join our global team in Technology.This is a challenging, fast-paced and exciting environment, with plenty of opportunities to influence and grow the technology area.

This role is critical in shaping and guiding the technical strategy and execution of platform engineering efforts, with a strong focus on modernizing infrastructure, scaling CI/CD capabilities and championing engineering excellence across the organization.

This is a 50/50 technical and managerial role-you will be expected to contribute hands-on in designing and evolving platform solutions, while also leading, mentoring, and managing a high-performing engineering team. Both skill sets are essential for success.

The ideal candidate brings deep experience in cloud-native platforms, infrastructure as code and automation-paired with a strong leadership presence and a collaborative DevOps mindset.

The key values that we strive towards in Technology

Ownership, Continuous Improvement Mindset, Trust and Honesty.

Delivery Engineering Team

Delivery Engineering is an internal platform team focused on building and improving systems to accelerate the delivery of software and infrastructure. Our team’s first target will be enabling DevOps practices due to its direct impact on the overall processes and culture.

The primary goal of Delivery Engineering is to build the “Golden Path” to production by automating and concentrating improvements around bottlenecks such as Integration points and handoffs. We will work closely with Development teams to break down silos, helping to build more resilient pipelines, continuously improve the delivery system and help with the adoption of better overall delivery practices/processes.
Currently reviewing the future possibility to become a fully supportive On-Call operational team.

Ops mindset. The Lead Delivery Engineer (DevOps & CI/CD Leadership)will act as a technical mentor and cross-team enabler, driving alignment, reliability and innovation in a fast-paced, agile environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a high-performing engineering team by providing mentorship, regular feedback, and growth opportunities-creating a culture of trust, learning, and accountability.
• Act as a people manager, responsible for coaching, career development, performance reviews, and team well-being.
• Drive the design and evolution of scalable delivery platforms and CI/CD pipelines, balancing short-term delivery with long-term technical vision.
• Collaborate closely with Product and Engineering leadership to align platform capabilities with evolving delivery and business needs.
• Own and lead technical initiatives and platform migrations (e.g., Jenkins to GitLab-CI), ensuring timely execution and stakeholder communication.
• Promote and embed operational excellence by leading incident response, postmortems and promoting a culture of reliability.
• Champion developer experience (DevEx) by embedding best practices in platform usability, speed and self-service-while always considering performance, security and capacity.
• Own hiring, onboarding and team capability-building, ensuring the right talent and a smooth ramp-up of new engineers.
• Focus on a metrics- and outcome-driven mindset, leading cost optimization and observability improvements across the stack.
• Be an advocate for non-functional best practices, including logging, monitoring, alerting and performance tuning.
• Partner with senior leadership and cross-functional peers to influence platform strategy and communicate the value of the team’s work.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in Senior or previous Lead for infrastructure, DevOps or platform engineering roles
• Proven experience leading engineering projects or teams, on the technical and managerial side, as this is a 50/50 role
• Demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional teams and stakeholders, with focus on prioritization and driving the implementation on our dynamic environment
• Experience with cloud-native platforms (e.g., OCI, GCP) and particularly with Kubernetes (K8S) ecosystems
• Deep demonstrable expertise in the following key platforms and technologies:
• CI/CD tools and deployments best practices (e.g., GitLab CI/CD, FluxCD)
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Helm, Ansible)
• Kubernetes, Docker Engine, Docker Compose and container orchestration
• Monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK)
• Track record of modernizing platforms, improving deployment processes and driving engineering efficiency able to drive and influence other teams
• Strong scripting/coding ability (Bash) and in any Programming Language (like Golang)
• Understanding of security best practices, SRE principles with focus on cost optimizations in cloud environments
• Ability to evaluate and implement modern platform tooling with extensive experience and in-depth knowledge of the Linux operating system for effective troubleshooting activities
• Problem-solving with ability to deep dive into problems to find the underlying issues
• Dealing with changes on a daily basis in a very dynamic work environment

Other Required Skills and Expectations

• Influential communication, able to clearly articulate technical strategies to both technical and non-technical stakeholders and driving teams towards a same goal
• Leadership by example which demonstrates constant accountability, integrity and professional posture. Embedding and encouraging a culture of continuous learning, collaboration and improvement
• Team Empowerment and Mentoring, actively supporting the growth of Junior and
• Mid-level engineers through guidance and feedback (1-on-1s, upskilling sessions)
• Able to jump on conflict resolution when required, navigating interpersonal conflicts with empathy and objectivity. Promoting a psychologically safe environment where diverse opinions are respected and encouraged
• Strategic thinking and prioritization aligning team efforts through well-informed decisions under pressure, balancing long-term vision with possible short-term needs
• Embraces change and leads others through ambiguity and transformation, at the same time that encourages experimentation and innovation while managing risks thoughtfully
• Proven practical emotional intelligence, understanding and respecting our team dynamics and adapting the leadership style accordingly
• Collaboration with cross-functional influence, building trust and credibility across the organization through reliable delivery and efficient partnership activities

We welcome applications only in English. Diversity & Inclusion at Sportserve

At Sportserve, we are deeply committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We believe in building a team that reflects a wide array of backgrounds, skills, and perspectives. Embracing diversity not only enriches our work culture but also drives innovation and excellence. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, where everyone’s contribution is valued and respected.

If you’re a passionate about technology and looking to start your career in an international, forward-thinking Sports Betting company, we’d love to hear from you. Apply now to become part of our exciting journey!