DevOps Engineer

Changing the world of pet food for good

We’re Tails.com, a dog food subscription company with a big difference. We create truly tailored food for each and every dog we serve. We start by asking people a few simple questions about their dog. Then we use that information to create their dog’s unique Tails.com recipe – so their dog gets exactly the nutrition they need, in the taste they love, delivered to their door every month. It’s clever stuff.

We’ve got bold plans. Having created an entirely new category in pet food, we’re now scaling fast in the UK and Europe – backed by Purina, one of the world’s largest pet food companies. You’ll join a bunch of smart people working towards the same goals – and a bunch of smart-ish dogs, all working on their own thing.

Together, we’ll change the world of pet food for good.

Building strong foundations

The Cloud Infrastructure Team works with our software engineering team to provide the strong foundation they need to focus on building solutions. We are building infrastructure, tooling and documentation alongside our Software and QA Engineers as well as providing expertise and advice to make our systems as secure, reliable and cost effective as possible.

As Tails.com grows and scales its number of services, we need our technology to grow with it. We're using a mix of proven technology, such as Kubernetes, Helm and Prometheus, with the latest, such as Linkerd, FluxCD, Backstage, and OpenTelemetry to build a standardised platform that makes developers’ lives easier. We want to make sure that developers can easily deploy their applications with the right security, observability, and reliability. At the same time we need to continue to keep the underlying infrastructure solid and cost effective.

The work you'll be doing won't just affect our digital presence; we produce a physical product so you’ll be able to see the real world impact that your work has for our customers.

Build our brand

We’re building an international brand, fast. We set ambitious goals. We challenge and support each other in equal measure. At the pace we’re moving, we prefer to test ideas and learn quickly rather than spend months building a business case. That means we celebrate when things go right, and we learn when things go wrong.

Sound like a team you want to join? Here’s how you’ll make a difference:

The role

We’re looking for a DevOps Engineer with knowledge of Kubernetes and working alongside software developers to help us build a secure, reliable and scalable platform.

You will be responsible for:

• Working with the Cloud Infrastructure Team to improve our infrastructure and make it more reliable, secure, and observable.
• Collaborating with the wider Software Engineering team to identify and solve problems with our infrastructure and software systems to unblock their work and deliver a great experience for our customers.
• Helping us iterate on our platform to make delivering secure, bug-free, and maintainable software ever easier for our developers.
  
  

The skills you’ll bring:

• Hands on experience with Kubernetes, Helm and preferably GitOps tooling like FluxCD.
• Experience working alongside software engineers and an understanding of the software development lifecycle.
• A passion for driving progress and keeping up to date with the latest Cloud Native technologies.
• A willingness to share your knowledge both within the team and across software engineering.
  
  

What's in it for you?

• Competitive salary, reviewed annually
• Annual bonus, based on company performance
• Flexible core hours, giving you true work life balance
• Fully remote working with the option to work from our Richmond or Heathrow offices
• 25 days of holiday (excluding bank holidays) which increases over time to a max of 27 days
• 9/10 day working week to enhance your wellbeing without a reduction in pay and leave allowance
• Optional 5 days unpaid leave and 1 paid volunteer day each year
• When you need a change of scenery, you can work from abroad 2 weeks every 6 months
• Health insurance for you, paid by Tails.com
• Extended maternity, paternity, shared parental and adoption pay. 6 months at 70% pay
• Flexible paid care leave to support immediate dependants, people close to you and pets
• An external financial coach to support a range of topics - debt management, savings and investments
• In house L&D team, with access to year round courses to help drive your development
• 50% discount on all Tails.com and 40% on Republic of Cats products
• Discounted gym membership
  
  

What’s next?

If this sounds like it matches your experience and what you’d love to do, we can’t wait to hear from you! If you’re unsure whether you fit our criteria exactly, please get in touch anyway. And because we believe that diverse teams perform better, we’d especially love to hear from you if you’re from an under-represented demographic.

Here’s a taster of how our recruitment process works:

• Once you have applied your CV will be reviewed by the Lead Cloud Infrastructure Engineer.
• If selected, you will then have an initial video call with the Lead Cloud Infrastructure Engineer for 30 minutes to understand more about your skills and experience.
• If successful, you will be invited back for two rounds of video call technical interviews of 1 hour each. The first is with members of the Cloud Infrastructure team and the second from the wider Software Engineering team. Some of the questions will be based on technical resources you will be provided ahead of time.
• The final stage is a video call with one of the Software Engineering Managers or the Head of Software Engineering for 30 minutes.
  
  

Our Commitment

We’re proud to be an active equal opportunity employer. We want to give everyone a fair chance to join us in changing the world of pet food for good. We do this by conducting a structured recruitment process for all candidates, as well as actively promoting our roles to communities that are under-represented at Tails.com.

During your interview process you’ll meet some of our team with varying levels of responsibility and experience. We want to give every candidate a fair interview process and if you need any reasonable adjustments made, please let us know.