IT Group Platform and DevOps Lead

The Group Platform and DevOps Lead is responsible for leading the team that delivers the Wacoal Group's enterprise development and deployment platforms. As well as making sure that our developers have the tools and capabilities in place to deliver new capabilities to the organisation and our customers, the Group Platform and DevOps Lead also has a key role in moving Wacoal Europe's technical infrastructure and cloud applications forward and looking for opportunities to increase resilience and the overall quality of our software services.

We are open-minded and forward-looking, evaluating the best tool or technology for the job. We share insights on new technologies, approaches to delivery or specific code we've seen, and we're enthusiastic and passionate about the field we work in.

The focus of the role is on platform engineering: Kubernetes-based workload orchestration, Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, GitOps delivery pipelines, and the shared services that underpin them. You will work closely with development teams to understand their needs, translating those into durable platform capabilities rather than one-off solutions.

You will also play a key role in evolving Wacoal Europe's cloud infrastructure posture on AWS, improving resilience, observability, and the capability of our services.

This is a hybrid role given the need to support both Wacoal and Bravissimo operations and to liaise closely with the respective IT specialists. The post holder will commit to at least a day a week at each of Bravissimo HQ (Leamington Spa) and Wacoal Europe (Desborough).

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead on the technical development of Platform capabilities across the Group. Collaborating with architects and other engineers to provide a suitable technical solution

• Leading the Platform team, setting objectives and developing their own learning and career paths

• Define and implement a unified platform and cloud engineering strategy across Wacoal and Bravissimo.

• Be the product owner for the Enterprise Platform. This means being answerable to the platform's various stakeholders and ensuring the platform delivers on stakeholder's requirements.

• Ensuring that the enterprise platform and cloud engineering approach is aligned with wider Group strategy and ensuring priority of platform features align with this strategy and technology vision.

• Partnering with development teams to provision their work.

• Maintain the availability of shared platform capabilities and services, reusable components and standardised tooling ensuring they are available for developers to consume in line with project expectations.

• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend adoption where beneficial.

• Assist in the maintenance of our existing estate, where platform capabilities have not yet replaced these existing technologies.

• Agile project management, keeping a prioritised backlog of stories and tasks that are created off the back of feedback and discussions with stakeholders.

• Managing the budget for the enterprise platform capabilities. Ensuring relevant bids are made during budget planning and being responsible for CapEx and OpEx relating to the enterprise platform.

• Supporting Cloud Applications Engineering effort where specialist expertise is required

• Management of external suppliers and services as required

Technical environment:

• Mixed on-premise virtual server and AWS IaaS/PaaS cloud estate (EC2, Windows, Linux)

• AWS, MongoDB, Terraform, Kubernetes (EKS & k3s)

• Local and Cloud Virtual environments including Docker containers

• Vertical applications moving to domain-driven, API-centric horizontal application structures

• Key development languages: TypeScript, Node.js, React, SQL

Do you have experience in TypeScript?, * Have experience deploying workloads to Kubernetes using GitOps continuous delivery techniques.

• A good understanding of API development (especially in Node.js) and API gateways.

• Strong understanding and experience with AWS resources (e.g. EKS, Lambda, VPCs, SQS, SNS, SGs, Route53).

• Proficient in writing and modularizing Infrastructure as Code.

• Can foster a relationship with our developers, listening to their feedback and distilling requirements for our platform.

• Can promote the usage of our enterprise platform within our organisation.

• Eager to learn new tools and technologies as they come to market.

• Maintain relationships with our current technology providers

• Leadership and management experience

Desired Skills:

• Infrastructure as Code - Terraform

• Kubernetes - k3s, EKS

• GitOps - Flux

• AWS (e.g. EKS, Lambda, VPCs, SQS, SNS, SGs, Route53)

• API Gateways - Tyk or similar (e.g., Kong, Amazon API Gateway)

• Experience with Microservices architecture

• Observability/SRE - Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, Jaeger or similar stacks

• Networking fundamentals

• Linux fundamentals

Preferred but not essential:

• Domain Driven Design

• Product-led platform delivery (e.g., team topologies)

• WAF experience (Imperva or similar)

• JavaScript / TypeScript (production backend experience)

• Node.js in serverless or service-based environments

• API design (OpenAPI/Swagger)

• AWS Lambda and event-driven execution

• Amazon EventBridge (custom buses, fan-out patterns)

• Amazon DynamoDB

• GraphQL APIs

• JavaScript (React)

• MongoDB

• Administration of GitLab or similar

Pulled from the full job description

• Employee discount
• Free parking
• Company pension, We have 25 shops in the UK alongside a thriving ecommerce community, which offers a wide range of beautiful lingerie, swimwear and nightwear for women who wear a D to L cup, giving them so much choice.

We are on an exciting journey of growth and are loving every minute of it!

Bravissimo Benefits

• Up to 25 days holiday

• The opportunity to buy up to 5 additional days holiday each year

• Access to free and confidential 24/7 employee support from Retail Trust

• 50% discount on full priced items for you, your family & friends, up to a limit

• Healthcare Cash Plan for you and up to 4 children through Medicash

• Employer pension contributions up to 6%

• Life Assurance

• Great training and learning resources

• Long service awards after 5 years' service

• Access to new and upcoming products, with the opportunity to provide feedback

• Access to discounts at many retailers, day out destinations and gyms through Retail Trust and Medicash

• Free parking at Bra HQ

Part of Wacoal Europe Group, Bravissimo is an award-winning, multi-channel lingerie retailer on a mission to uplift women. Since 1995, our purpose has stayed the same: to inspire our customers to feel supported, celebrated, and confident every day.