Johannesburg: Senior DevOps Engineer

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced DevOps Engineer with strong AWS expertise to join our client project team. This role will focus initially on developer enablement and CI/CD pipeline optimization, and then evolve into broader infrastructure automation and operations as the platform matures. The ideal candidate will bring hands-on AWS experience, automation-first thinking, and a passion for enabling development teams through reliable, scalable, and observable infrastructure. What you’ll do: Assess the current pipeline and infrastructure setup; recommend and implement improvements aligned with industry best practices. Design, implement, and maintain CI/CD pipelines using AWS-native services (CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, ECR). Build and manage infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation, AWS CDK) and increase IaC maturity across the environment. Automate deployments, provisioning, monitoring, and incident response processes. Enable developer productivity by reducing deployment friction, providing templates, scripts, and self-service tooling. Design, develop, test, and deploy serverless applications (AWS Lambda) and containerised workloads (ECS/Fargate). Improve observability using monitoring and logging tools (CloudWatch, X-Ray, ELK stack). Work with microservices architecture (Aurora Postgres backend, ECS containers, modular reusable services). Provide guidance and mentorship to junior team members. Your Expertise: Strong practical AWS experience (S3, ECS/Fargate, RDS/Aurora, ECR, IAM, Redis, VPC, Parameter Store/Secrets Manager, WAF). Solid knowledge of containerisation technologies (Docker, ECS; Kubernetes experience beneficial though not in current use). Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, AWS CDK). Strong scripting in Python, Bash, or similar. Experience designing/building CI/CD pipelines and automating infrastructure from scratch. Familiarity with Java/Tomcat applications (bonus). Hands-on experience with monitoring/observability (CloudWatch, ELK, X-Ray). Experience with SQL/NoSQL databases. Strong problem-solving skills and ability to stabilise infrastructure under scale. AWS Certification (Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer, or similar). 3–5 years’ experience implementing AWS automation pipelines. Familiarity with Step Functions, certificate automation. Attributes: Tenacious and results-driven with the ability to build and manage infrastructure from scratch. Data-driven engineering mindset. Strong communicator to both technical and non-technical audiences. Self-motivated, collaborative, and able to mentor others. Other information applicable to the opportunity: Contract position Location: Johannesburg (Hybrid – 3 days) Why work for us? Want to work for an organization that solves complex real-world problems with innovative software solutions? At iOCO, we believe anything is possible with modern technology, software, and development expertise. We are continuously pushing the boundaries of innovative solutions across multiple industries using an array of technologies.  You will be part of a consultancy, working with some of the most knowledgeable minds in the industry on interesting solutions across different business domains.  Our culture of continuous learning will ensure that you will have all the opportunities, tools, and support to hone and grow your craft.  By joining IOCO you will have an open invitation to developer inspiring forums. A place where you will be able to connect and learn from and with your peers by sharing ideas, experiences, practices, and solutions.  iOCO is an equal opportunity employer with an obligation to achieve its own unique EE objectives in the context of Employment Equity targets. Therefore, our employment strategy gives primary preference to previously disadvantaged individuals or groups.