AMS PSR

On behalf of DWP, we are looking for a Senior AWS DevOps Engineer for a 12 Month (Inside IR35) hybrid contract based up to 3 days per week in Leeds, Manchester or Newcastle.

Purpose

An experienced and motivated Senior DevOps Engineer is required to design, build, test and deploy cloud-based infrastructure and applications using CI/CD and Infrastructure as Code.

The role includes design, build, day-to-day operational support, monitoring, troubleshooting, and resolution of technical issues, supporting the team to meet delivery objectives in a reliable and scalable manner.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and operate scalable AWS cloud environments
• Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines using GitLab
• Support teams in delivering secure and reliable applications
• Monitor systems, investigate incidents, and perform root cause analysis
• Define and enforce engineering standards, best practices, and reusable patterns
• Contribute to architectural decisions across infrastructure and platform design

Technical Skills

• GitLab CI/CD pipelines
• Terraform
• Kubernetes

Essential Experience (Must Have)

AWS (Core Requirement)

• Designing, building, and operating AWS environments at scale
• Strong networking knowledge (VPC design, routing, segmentation, ingress/egress)
• Security (IAM, least privilege, encryption)
• High availability and resilience patterns
• Cost optimisation strategies
• Monitoring, alerting, incident response and root cause analysis

Kubernetes (Core Requirement)

• Cluster provisioning and lifecycle management
• Deployment using Helm
• Flux, ArgoCD
• Networking, ingress and service exposure
• Security, RBAC and secrets management
• Troubleshooting and performance optimisation

DevOps Tooling & Engineering

• GitLab CI/CD pipelines
• Terraform (modular design, remote state)
• Bash / Shell scripting
• Linux administration
• Docker containerisation

AWS Core Services

• Amazon EC2
• Amazon VPC (Subnets, Route Tables, Security Groups)
• IAM roles and policies
• AWS Systems Manager
• Amazon CloudWatch
• Elastic Load Balancing
• AWS Secrets Manager / KMS
• Amazon S3

Desirable Skills

• Amazon EKS
• Ansible
• AWS Batch
• Security tooling (Tanium, Tenable, Trend Micro)
• Packer
• Infrastructure testing (Inspec)
• AWS Site-to-Site VPN
• Database provisioning, troubleshooting & maintenance

Working Practices

• GitLab-first CI/CD approach
• Focus on AWS architecture and Kubernetes platform engineering
• Pipeline flow: Build → Test → Security Scan → Deploy → Release
• Use of runners, environments, and approval gates
• Release tagging (e.g. release-YYYY.MM.DD)

Experience Level

• 5–10+ years in DevOps or Platform Engineering
• Experience delivering production-grade cloud platforms

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.

Disability Confident 

As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, DWP guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. This scheme encourages candidates with a disability and/or neurodivergence to apply. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

Armed Forces Covenant

DWP guarantees to interview veterans or spouses / partners of military personnel who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates / military spouses or partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following "this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different".