Navigating the DevOps journey at Lowell
Rising Star of the Year finalist Callum Hester on the importance of perseverance
In the fast-paced world of technology, adapting and leading through change is crucial. I’m honoured to share my journey, and what I have learned along the way, as the DevOps Lead at Lowell’s UK business, which has led to my nomination for the Rising Star of the Year award at the DevOps Excellence Awards 2025.
There are three things I’ve learned during this journey that I’d like to share with you. The first is the need to accept that failure as a part of growth, I have had to try things out, fail and adjust my approach many times before success came. It’s just normal and in the end a powerful process to embrace.
The second is perseverance, good things come from hard work with a dash of vision – don’t be afraid to put the time and effort in and just keep going. When you love what you do this is easy.
Finally, to properly succeed you need to create good working relationships with a lot of people – this is never time wasted. Technology excellence won’t get you there alone without the support and guidance of others.
In less than three years, I put in the hard yards, learned from my mistakes and moved from a junior Systems Engineer to the company’s primary SME for cloud-based technologies. Simultaneously, I pursued my passion through an MSc in IT Architectural Design – my advice is to never stop learning, take those professional development opportunities when they arise.
My role as DevOps Lead was a new function within the Lowell, and I was tasked with building a DevOps capability from the ground up. This was no small feat, as we were new to the technology and the concept of DevOps. One of the key strategies I championed was a “cloud first” approach for new development. This involved exploring cloud-based solutions and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to future-proof the business. To achieve this, I used the strong working relationships I’d built and introduced a series of educational activities to upskill the Technology department. I ensured that all internal standards, including security, were met, and worked closely with outsource partners, to embed best practices from the outset.
I learned the power of repetitive and consistent communication which ensured that the many sessions I delivered to educate colleagues were tailored to my audience, encouraging broad attendance and engagement. I also held one-on-one sessions with key individuals to proactively address concerns, reinforce the value of DevOps and ensure their support to a smooth transition to new technologies.
Leading a team for the first time, I recruited team members with the same passion for DevOps as me. They are people who want to make a difference, and that made it easy for me to upskill them and create an automated infrastructure as a service capability in Azure. Utilising tools such as Terraform, Kubernetes, and security as code, we developed a powerful offering designed around the future needs of the business.
My enthusiastic team and I have now built a platform using the latest approaches to cloud-based architecture. Focusing on areas with the most inefficiencies in traditional datacentre operations, we developed a platform that can automatically scale on demand, and build/destroy testing environments as needed. This has significantly reduced costs and increased the efficiency of development pipelines through structured automation built into the application development lifecycle. We have built processes that are repeatable and automated from the ground up, with security integrated at the lowest levels. We have ensured that that security is not an afterthought but rather a fundamental aspect of the design.
My journey into DevOps has been one of hard work delivering success. I am honoured to be a nominee for the Rising Star of the Year category in the Computing DevOps Excellence Awards and I hope parts of my journey serve as an inspiration to others embarking on their own DevOps journey. Remember to learn to fail, persevere and build an excellent network through relationship building and you will find your work is its own reward.
About the author
Callum Hester is Lead DevOps at Lowell. He’s been with the company for nine-and-a-half years, moving through a series of IT roles. He started as a service desk technician prior to Fujitsu's managed service desk in 2015, and since then, he’s taken on five different roles. Prior to becoming a DevOps engineer in 2021, he managed various IT projects, including the Windows 10 roll-out and ensuring everyone can work from home when Covid hit. He also took on understanding and documenting all IT knowledge for Lowell’s legacy organisation - Fredrickson's. More recently, he’s been a key player in Lowell’s cloud strategy, design, implementation and continuous improvement.