DevOps Engineer

Platform & DevOps Engineer

SporeSense is an AgriTech spin-out company from the University of Manchester developing an AI-powered device that detects airborne crop disease before any visible symptoms appear on crop thus helping farmers to act early, protect their yields and use fewer pesticides.

As our Platform & DevOps Engineer, you will build and run the cloud platform that connects our field devices to the growers who rely on them. As a technical team member, you will work directly with the founders, scientists and customers, shape our infrastructure and engineering culture from the start, and see in real time in the field how your systems perform.

The role has four core areas:

1. Cloud infrastructure and DevOps: Design, automate and run the cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines and Kubernetes environments behind the SporeSense platform.
2. Reliability and security: Keep the platform observable, secure and resilient, with strong monitoring, access controls, backups and disaster recovery.
3. Field and AI integration: Connect field-deployed devices, AI and machine vision services, and customer-facing applications into one dependable system.
4. Technical direction: Help shape our architecture, technology choices and roadmap, guided by what growers and partners tell us.

Salary

£37,000 – £45,000 per annum; fixed term for 12 months initially, with progression subject to annual project continuation and performance review.

Location

Hybrid; Central Manchester, with hybrid flexibility for planning, reporting and remote work. The role may occasionally features some UK travel to growers, field trials and partners.

Working hours

Full time: Monday-Friday

Annual leave

You are entitled to 25 working days paid annual leave per leave year and paid leave for UK bank holidays on your normal working days.

What you will do

• Design, build and maintain cloud infrastructure on AWS and/or Azure using Infrastructure-as-Code
• Build and run CI/CD pipelines for fast, reliable and secure releases
• Deploy and optimise containerised applications and Kubernetes environments
• Set up monitoring, logging, tracing and alerting so problems are caught early
• Deploy and support our AI, machine vision and data-analysis services
• Look after data security, access controls, backups and disaster recovery
• Investigate and fix issues affecting reliability, performance or security
• Automate wherever it saves the team time and effort
• Keep clear documentation, architecture diagrams and operating procedures
• Work with growers, field trial teams and distributors to support deployments and understand real-world needs
• Evaluate new tools and technologies that add capability or cut cost

Skills and attributes

Required from day 1

• A solid grasp of cloud infrastructure, distributed systems and modern DevOps practice
• Experience deploying and supporting cloud infrastructure in AWS and/or Azure
• Experience building and maintaining automated deployment pipelines
• Experience with containers and Kubernetes
• Strong programming skills in Python, C, C++ or C#
• Experience supporting live production systems, with strong debugging and root-cause analysis
• A good understanding of cybersecurity and secure system design
• Clear communication with both technical and non-technical people
• The ability to work independently, own technical decisions and prioritise well
• Willingness to travel in the UK and occasionally Europe, and to meet growers, researchers and customers on farms

Desirable, not essential

• AI infrastructure, LLM deployment or machine learning workflows
• IoT, edge computing or sensor networks
• Networking, VPNs and secure communications
• GitOps tooling and platform engineering approaches
• TypeScript or JavaScript
• AI-assisted software development
• Experience leading an infrastructure project or technical workstream
• Experience in a start-up or scale-up
• AWS, Azure, Terraform, Kubernetes or cybersecurity certifications
• A full UK driving licence
• An interest in agriculture, sensing, environmental monitoring or scientific instrumentation

Skills you’ll develop in the role

• Building a cloud platform at an early stage, with real influence over architecture and tooling
• Running systems that link hardware on farms to live customer services
• Hands-on experience with AI, edge devices and connected sensors in production
• A close understanding of growers, agronomists and crop science
• Broad exposure to how a deep-tech start-up is built, across technology, customers and fundraising, working directly with the founders
• Ownership of the platform and our engineering practices as the team grows

Experience needed

• A degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Physics, Maths, IT or a related subject, or equivalent professional experience
• Further training in cloud architecture, distributed systems or AI infrastructure is a plus
• You take ownership, make pragmatic calls and are comfortable with uncertainty
• You balance reliability, security, cost and speed of delivery