DevOps Engineer

Role: Senior/Lead DevOps Engineer

Duration: 6-month contract

Location: Limerick, Ireland, Hybrid (3 days onsite)

Client is seeking a DevOps Lead Engineer to join a greenfield MES rollout at a biotech manufacturing site in Limerick, Ireland.

We're looking for someone with a strong track record as a Lead or Senior DevOps Engineer, comfortable pushing configuration changes through dev, test, and live production environments, with solid grounding in version control for MES configuration, CI/CD pipeline design, and automated testing support.

Key Responsibilities

• Build, implement, and refine CI/CD pipelines for consistent, dependable deployments across dev, test, and production

• Take ownership of the DevOps toolchain and environment lifecycle: source control, infrastructure-as-code, configuration management, release management, monitoring, and observability

• Provision and manage secure, resilient, scalable infrastructure underpinning MES platforms, keeping availability and performance high

• Manage MES platforms (Emerson Syncade experience preferred) — deployments, configuration, patching, upgrades, and day-to-day operational support

• Set and enforce development standards, branching strategy, code review practice, release governance, and change control suited to a regulated manufacturing setting

• Work alongside software engineering, QA, MES vendors, system integrators, and business stakeholders to deliver automated deployments and infrastructure-as-code

• Build automated testing and quality gates into CI/CD pipelines with QA, pushing shift-left testing and stronger release quality

• Stand up monitoring, logging, and alerting to stay ahead of platform health and performance issues

• Underpin CSV, audit readiness, disaster recovery, and business continuity with compliant documentation and deployment records

• Drive ongoing improvement across the delivery lifecycle, clearing deployment bottlenecks and tracking progress via metrics

• Serve as technical authority and escalation point for complex infrastructure, deployment, and operational issues

Requirements

• Demonstrated experience as a DevOps Lead or Senior DevOps Engineer on complex enterprise programmes

• Hands-on development background with a strong grasp of the SDLC and modern DevOps practice

• Solid CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, automation, and scripting skills

• Experience managing enterprise application environments — release management, configuration management, infrastructure provisioning

• Strong background supporting MES platforms, ideally Emerson Syncade, across deployment, configuration, upgrades, and operational support

• Experience in regulated pharma/life sciences environments preferred, with working knowledge of GxP, CSV, and GAMP 5

• Familiarity with MES integrations into SAP, LIMS, and historian systems, plus containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes)

• Strong problem-solving, communication, and stakeholder management skills