Senior DevOps Engineer

Our mission is to make meaningful learning a part of your everyday 🧠. The shelf life of our skills is now less than 5 years. So, if you stopped learning today, your skills would soon be irrelevant. Think that’s a big problem? You’d be right.

Enter HowNow. Founded in 2019, our Learning and Skills Platform is disrupting the way people learn and upskill through technology. Whether it's finding a quick answer, learning skills or tapping into shared knowledge, we make it easy for people to learn what they need, when they need it.

Already used by fast-growing scale-ups and global enterprises, such as Trainline, Depop and Sanofi, we’re pushing the boundaries of how people learn.

Hi I'm Naaz the People Advisor at HowNow 👋🏾 I’m looking for a Senior DevOps Engineer to join us.

Joining us as the first DevOps engineer offers a unique opportunity to shape our culture and practices from the ground up. You'll have the autonomy to drive innovation and make a visible impact on the company’s growth and success, setting the foundation for our future.

As the company grows, so will your opportunities. You'll be in a prime position to evolve into a leadership role, guiding the DevOps function as it becomes central to our operations. This role is perfect for someone eager to make a lasting impact and grow alongside a dynamic company.

Day-to-day tasks will include 📩

• You’ll design and manage scalable and highly available cloud infrastructure on AWS, leveraging services such as EC2, RDS, ElastiCache, OpenSearch, Lambda, and ECS. Implement and maintain EC2 Auto Scaling and load balancing to ensure seamless performance.
• You’ll develop, refine, and oversee continuous integration and deployment pipelines, ensuring rapid and reliable code deployment using Jenkins, Terraform, and CloudFormation.
• You’ll drive automation initiatives using advanced scripting in Bash, Python, and PowerShell to improve system deployments, upgrades, and day-to-day operations.
• You’ll utilize AWS CloudWatch and custom monitoring tools to track system performance and health. Proactively handle incidents, troubleshoot system issues, and perform root cause analysis to prevent future disruptions.
• You’ll work closely with engineering and product teams to define and implement infrastructure solutions that support the development of new features and products.

The key things that we will be looking for in applicants 🔑

• You have minimum of 5 years in DevOps or similar roles with a strong background in software development and system administration.
• You have bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; or equivalent practical experience.
• You have proficiency with AWS, including managing databases such as MongoDB and MySQL on RDS. Strong experience in building and managing containerized applications using Docker and Kubernetes.
• You have excellent analytical and troubleshooting skills, with the capability to work under pressure and manage multiple priorities.
• You have strong interpersonal and communication skills, capable of working in a team environment and interacting with all levels of management.

Nice to Have:

• Familiarity with the Ruby on Rails ecosystem.
• AWS Certification is highly regarded.
• Active contributions to open-source projects.

What you’ll get:

💰 Our salaries are calculated using a SaaS benchmarking tool called (Figures). Happy to disclose upon application. You’ll also receive a performance based bonus on top.

🏡 Hybrid working (in our offices 3x a week Mon-Wed)

💆 Wind-down Fridays. No meetings from 3pm onwards on Fridays, for you to wind down for the weekend. Our HowNow’ers use this time to exercise, study, or spend some time with their family and friends, which you can read about here

👼🏼 Enhanced maternity and paternity policies which you can read about here

🌴 25 days holiday, plus bank holidays and your birthday day off

📚 An annual £200 learning and development budget

🐶 Dog friendly offices - we love our pets! 🐾

🤩 Monthly socials and team dinners which have included Bounce, Mystery Rooms, ITC Maratha, JW Marriot and many more

💡 Access to the very best learning platform out there (HowNow+) to keep you at the top of your game

What's next? 🤔

Once you've applied, we'll get back in touch with you. This is usually within the next 5 working days. Sometimes it can take slightly longer, but we will get back to you irregardless of what the outcome of your application is.

1. You'll be invited to a 30-minute video call with Naaz, our People Operations Coordinator to discuss your experiences and the role.
2. You'll be invited to a 60-minute technical Interview
3. You'll be invited to a 60-minute video call with Hardik, our Backend Team Lead and Ashish, our CTO and Co-Founder.