DevOps/Data Governance Technical Specialist

Company & Department Context

The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading business news organisations, recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. The FT has a record paying readership of one million, three-quarters of which are digital subscriptions. It is part of Nikkei Inc., which provides a broad range of information, news and services for the global business community.

We have offices in more than 35 cities, including London, New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, Manila, Sofia, San Francisco and Tokyo. Join us and find an inclusive and fast-paced environment with unique opportunities to support every step of your career.

Learn more about the FT, including announcements and career opportunities, at aboutus.ft.com.

Role overview 

This role sits in the Data & AI Governance function and focuses on platform engineering and infrastructure ownership to ensure the reliable and scalable operation, integration, and development of Data & AI Governance platforms across the FT.

The role is responsible primarily for designing, integrating, optimising, and maintaining cloud-native platform infrastructure and services enabling metadata management, data lineage, data quality, data access, data retention, data compliance and data sharing in a dynamic, cloud-native data platform. 

The successful candidate is expected to take technical ownership of the key data governance systems, namely SageMaker Unified Studio (SMUS) and the infrastructure-as-code solution Data Innovation Workbench (DIW), ensuring their reliability, security, scalability, and effective integration within the broader FT data platform. 

The role contributes to the FT’s broader Data & AI Governance strategy by ensuring that governance technology is robust, well-integrated and capable of scaling with increasing demand or in response to evolving industry best practices. 

The role will report directly into the Data Governance team but requires close collaboration with the FT’s DevOps, Data Engineering, BI, Data Science and Cyber Security functions.

Context & Drivers for the Role

Data & AI Governance capabilities at the FT are increasingly dependent on well-integrated, cloud-native tools. Currently, the technical ownership of these tools is distributed across multiple teams. 

As adoption grows, and the governance tools ecosystem expands, there is a need for clear technical ownership centralised in the Data Governance team to enforce consistent infrastructure standards and scalable integration patterns. 

Responsibilities 

These responsibilities reflect the current scope of the role and will evolve over time as the FT advances its data governance and platform capabilities. 

Governance Platform Technical Ownership & Reliability

• Act as the technical owner of SageMaker Unified Studio (SMUS) and Data Innovation Workbench (DIW), ensuring high availability, reliability, and security
• Serve as the primary point of contact for platform-related infrastructure issues and escalations
• Ensure that technical metadata, data lineage, and data quality is consistently captured, accurate, and reliable via SMUS
• Ensure consistent governance enforcement across integrated AWS services for all Data handling services (e.g., S3, Redshift, MSK, MWAA) via SMUS.

Infrastructure & DevOps

• Define and implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) standards using primarily AWS CDK, CloudFormation, and Terraform 
• Manage and optimise cloud-native infrastructure to ensure scalability, resilience, and maintainability 
• Plan and execute infrastructure changes, upgrades, and platform improvements with minimal service disruption.

System Integration 

• Collaborate with system owning teams to setup and maintain integration between SMUS and other systems such as data stores (Redshift, S3, MongoDB), Streaming platforms (Kafka/MSK)  orchestration tools (e.g., Airflow, MWAA)
• Ensure lineage metadata is accurately captured and maintained as pipelines evolve
• Design, deploy, and support integrations with additional systems (e.g. analytics tools, streaming platforms, operational databases).

Performance, Compliance & Cost Monitoring

• Monitor platform usage, performance, and capacity to ensure systems scale effectively with demand
• Track and optimise cloud infrastructure costs, establishing best practices for cost efficiency
• Implement monitoring, alerting, and observability for platform health.
• Enable audit, monitoring, and compliance reporting for all SMUS platform activities

Continuous Improvement & Strategy 

• Contribute to the development of standards and best practices for governance tooling and infrastructure
• Advise on platform evolution, including AWS service adoption, architectural improvements, and system upgrades
• Support the broader data governance strategy by ensuring platforms enable effective governance at scale.
• Work in close partnership with FT’s Data Platform team to ensure governance capabilities are natively embedded into platform services, architectures, and delivery processes. 

Required Skills & Experience 

• Proven experience in a DevOps, platform engineering, or cloud infrastructure role
• Hands-on experience with AWS cloud services and infrastructure
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (CDK, CloudFormation, Terraform)
• Experience supporting (ideally, owning) production-grade cloud platforms and services
• Experience monitoring, analysing, and optimising cloud costs using best practices and tooling
• Experience in setting up and supporting CI/CD pipelines, familiarity with CircleCI or willingness to acquire one 
• Understanding of cloud security best practices and compliance requirements

Additional (Desirable) Skills & Experience 

These skills are not required at entry but will enhance early success in the role and represent key areas for development with support from the FT

• Experience implementing data governance capabilities in cloud-native environments
• Understanding of metadata, data lineage, and data & ai governance concepts
• Experience working with data platform data engineering workflows in AWS environment (e.g., Redshift, S3)
• Familiarity with SQL or willingness to acquire one
• Experience with data pipeline orchestration tools such as Airflow
• Experience with identity and access management (IAM), SSO integration, and role-based access control
• Experience with streaming platforms (e.g. Kafka/MSK) and modern data architectures
• Experience with SageMaker Unified Studio and Data Innovation Workbench or similar data platform environments

What’s in it for you?

• Annual bonus scheme
• 25 days paid leave
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Program
• Life Insurance
• Enhanced Parental Leave policy
• Food Allowance
• Multisport Card
• Comprehensive in-house training, and external training programs (subject to approval)

We currently operate a hybrid model which requires staff to work onsite 50% of the time, subject to role requirements & regular review. While flexible working requests will be considered, not all patterns are suitable for all roles. We believe this balanced approach supports flexibility and protects our culture, making collaboration and communication easier, building stronger relationships and team cohesion, and supporting peer learning.  We reserve discretion on reasonable notice to change this approach either generally or for specific individuals or teams. 

Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion 

We believe in the power of unique perspectives and want all voices in our organisation to be heard, respected and valued. A supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves and operate to their full potential. We are committed to removing barriers for everyone, with a focus on addressing those faced by underrepresented groups.

Accessibility

We are a disability confident employer and Valuable 500 signatory.

Please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments/personalisation as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements or have any questions, email [email protected] and a member of our team will be happy to help.

Further information

At the FT, we embrace innovation and the use of technology and appreciate that individuals may leverage AI tools as part of their job application process. Whilst we are happy for you to use AI to assist with your application, it is essential that all information provided is authentic and accurately represents your skills, experience, and qualifications.

Candidates should be aware that the use of AI throughout the application process may be monitored to ensure a fair and transparent hiring process for all.

Please beware of fraudulent job postings and offers claiming to be from the Financial Times. All legitimate opportunities will direct you to apply through the official Financial Times careers site, and the FT will never ask for financial information, payments, or referrals to third parties during the hiring process. If you have any concerns about the legitimacy of a job posting or suspect any scam activity, please contact [email protected]. 

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