AMS PSR

On behalf of DWP we are looking for a Senior DevOps Engineer for a 12 month (Inside IR35) contract. Hybrid working based in Birmingham, Blackpool, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle or Sheffield. 

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy. As the UK’s biggest public service department, it administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to around 20 million claimants and customers. As such, we operate on a scale that is almost unmatched anywhere in Europe and most people in Britain come into contact with us at some point in their lives.

Working with DWP, you will be helping us to drive our priorities to:

• Help people to move into work and support those already in work to progress, with the aim of increasing overall workforce participation
• Help people to plan and save for later life, while providing a safety net for those who need it now
• Provide effective, efficient, and innovative services to the millions of claimants who rely on us every day, including the most vulnerable in society
• Improve experience of our services while maximising value for money for the taxpayer.

As a Senior DevOps Engineer you will be responsible for the design and implementation of applications' build, release, deployment and configuration activities. Other responsibilities include working within multi-functional teams to gather requirements, evaluate tools, implementing/updating solutions, building and executing test plans, provision environments, application performance reviews, assist migration of legacy systems, and triaging and fixing operational issues. You will contribute to DevOps culture promotion and aide/support the transition to DevOps as a better practice.

As a Senior DevOps Engineer your main responsibilities will be to:

• Transform technical requirements into an effective DevOps toolchain to enable product delivery, assure and implement deployment strategies and apply different techniques to methods in analysing and resolving problems, working up new practices and procedures or modify existing processes to improve performance.
• Resolve issues to ensure citizen-facing services are repeatable, scalable, resilient and highly available
• Communicate with a range of people, inside the Department, in other Government Organisations, in external organisations and with the general public to produce comprehensive technical documentation for wider consumption.
• Contribute to community discussions about DevOps best practice within Engineering, responsible for providing recommendations based on in depth research and determination of the options. Make and review decisions to progressively improve decision-making.
• Collaborate across teams and liaise with Lead/Senior DevOps Engineers and Technical Architects to investigate technical solutions.
• Implement a DevOps culture and automation best practices.

Essential:

• An active SC Clearance is an essential requirement for this role, as a minimum you must be willing & eligible to undergo checks. (Please note, due to the exceptional requirements of this position (short-term nature of this role and speed at which we require a postholder in situ) preference may be given to candidates who meet all of the essential criteria and hold active security clearance.) 
• Proven experience implementing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform, with a strong focus on modular, scalable design principles.
• Strong hands-on experience in infrastructure automation using Ansible and managing cloud infrastructure within AWS environments.
• Demonstrable experience deploying and managing key AWS services, including IAM, EC2, Lambda, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, ECR, CloudWatch, KMS, VPC, Route 53, AWS Backup, and Systems Manager.
• Experience using GitLab for source code management, CI/CD pipeline development, version control, release management, and deployment processes.
• An understanding of containerisation technologies (Docker), workflow orchestration with Airflow, and data processing concepts using Python, SQL, Spark, and PySpark.

Desirable:

• Experience building and supporting data platforms using AWS services such as EMR, Glue, Athena, and integrating data processing frameworks including Apache Spark.
• Knowledge of AWS data governance and AI services, including Lake Formation, Textract, and Comprehend.
• Understanding of secure cloud architecture, including encryption, access control, key management, and security best practices within AWS.
• Familiarity with software engineering and solution design principles, including the use of appropriate data structures and reusable platform components.
• Experience applying DWP Engineering Standards and Best Practices or similar enterprise development and cloud governance frameworks.

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".