About the job

Job summary

Are you a dedicated person who is passionate about making a difference?

Would you like to work for the Ministry of Defence?

Defence Business Services (DBS) is one of the largest shared service organisations in Europe that provides a wide range of corporate services, to over 1.2 million end users, including serving and past military and families, as well as MoD civil servants and industry. DBS delivers large scale administration and smaller specialist services to enable the wider MOD to focus on its core aims, maintaining the UK’s Defence and Security. Services include Human Resources, Pay, Veterans, Finance and Procurement.

• Our Vision - To support UK defence customers with outstanding service every time.
• Our Mission - Together we will proudly support Defence, continuously improving and delivering flexible, timely, sustainable and value for money services that underpin the whole force and enhance operational capability.

DBS is committed to creating a great place to work for all our colleagues. We are building an inclusive culture and respectful environment that reflects the diversity of the society.

We want to maximise the potential of everyone who chooses to work for us through opportunities to develop your skills and experience. We also offer a range of flexible working patterns and support to make a fulfilling career accessible to you and offer a Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%. Where your role permits, we support a blended working approach alternatively known as hybrid working.

Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working.  This is a non-contractual arrangement where all office-based employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in office, subject to capacity and any required workplace adjustments.  Requirements to attend other locations for official business, or work in another MOD office, will also count towards this level of attendance. Applicants can request further information regarding how this may work in their team from the Vacancy Holder (see advert for contact details). Defence Business Services cannot respond to any questions about working arrangements.

Come and join the DBS community today!

Job description

We have an exciting opportunity to join the Defence Business Services (DBS) Armed Forces and Veterans (AFV) Services MI Data & Interfaces (MIDI) Team.  You will lead a small DevOps (Development and Operations) team of Oracle Analytics Server (OAS) technical specialists, who provide development and support activities to a major reporting service within the MoD.

DBS AFVS are collaborating with their commercial partners to deliver a major transformation programme aimed at providing a more robust and coherent IT/infrastructure using the latest Oracle Analytical and Data Integration products which will migrate to Cloud based services, offering many benefits,  including a better customer experience.

As the successful candidate you will provide senior developer skills and leadership of a small DevOps team of data modellers and Oracle Analytics Server (OAS) technical specialists, who provide business enhancement to a major reporting service within the MoD.  You will provide OAS technical support, maintenance, and development activities on a large enterprise data warehouse reporting application. You will be part of a wider group responsible for Development and Change of the IT capabilities used for Armed Forces personnel and Veterans. 
 
The role is primarily to deliver the full software delivery lifecycle of development change using the OAS product but will evolve into a more DevOps and agile delivery focussed team, as the platform transformation progresses.

There are opportunities for training and development to help you grow within the role.
To succeed in this role you should enjoy working as part of a team, be confident with IT, have excellent organisational and interpersonal skills and be an effective communicator. In return this role will provide you with the opportunity to expand your knowledge and develop your skills to a higher level.
 
Responsibilities for the successful candidate will include the following:

• Mentoring and practical support for other team members on all areas of the OAS product and related technical matters.
• Service Operational support of a large enterprise reporting application, working within an ITIL aligned service management framework.
• As part of a resolver team respond efficiently and effectively to service tickets raised, as well as ensure the team is managing the ticket workload.
• Work closely with the Contractor resources and their technical teams to ensure coherent and effective solutions are developed.
• Undertake service improvements with fully documented responses to new business requirements, problem remediation and improvement activities.
• Build and maintain the technical design documentation for the reporting platform.
• Review design documentation from both team members and the Contractor technical teams.
• Develop full software capabilities (OAS) with full testing and deployment, whilst making use of waterfall and agile methodologies.
• Represent and champion the AF&V MI & Data business area in all technical meetings and discussions with the Contractor, product vendor and other MOD departments.

 

Person specification

To succeed in this role you should enjoy working as part of a team, be confident with IT, have excellent organisational and interpersonal skills and be an effective communicator. In return this role will provide you with the opportunity to expand your knowledge and develop your skills to a higher level.
 
Your main day to day activities will be:

• Develop full software capabilities (OAS), by writing scripts, with full testing and deployment, whilst making use of waterfall and agile methodologies.
• As part of a resolver team respond efficiently and effectively to service tickets raised, solving challenging platform use and configuration issues, as well as ensure the team is managing the ticket workload.
• Undertake service improvements with fully documented responses to new business requirements, problem remediation and improvement activities.
• Work closely with the Contractor resources and their technical teams to ensure coherent and effective solutions are developed and supporting routine monitoring activities
• Mentoring and practical support for other team members on all areas of the OAS product and related technical matters.
• Build and maintain the technical design documentation for the reporting platform, applying appropriate standards, ensuring high service quality.
• Review design documentation from both team members and the Contractor technical teams., applying appropriate standards, ensuring high service quality
• Represent and champion the AF&V MI & Data business area in all technical meetings and discussions with the Contractor, product vendor and other MOD departments.
   

You will also be expected to carry out the following day to day activities:

• Progressing the DDaT Profession, understanding all roles and helping to build our community.
• Working and assessing to appropriate standards: for instance, accessibility, the CDDO service standard and our own community practices
• Improving our skills and approaches as well as keeping up to speed with the technology landscape.

Skills and experience requirements

• Availability and capacity management. You can manage service components to ensure they meet business needs and performance targets. (Skill level: working)
• Development process optimisation. You can identify process optimisation opportunities with guidance and contribute to the implementation of proposed solutions. (Skill level: working)
• Information security. You can understand information security. You can design solutions and services with security controls embedded, specifically engineered with mitigation of security threats as a core feature. (Skill level: practitioner)
• Modern standards approach. You can competently apply a modern standards approach and guide others to do so. (Skill level: practitioner)
• Programming and build (data engineering) with Oracle products or equivalent. You can collaborate with others when necessary to review specifications. You can use the agreed specifications to design, code, test and document programs or scripts of medium-to-high complexity, using the right standards and tools. (Skill level: practitioner)
• Prototyping. You can approach prototyping as a team activity, actively soliciting prototypes and testing with others. Understanding relational databases, you can establish design patterns and iterate them. You can use a variety of prototyping methods and choose the most appropriate. (Skill level: practitioner)
• Service support. You can demonstrate a breadth of understanding of service support. (Skill level: expert)
• Systems design. You can design data models/systems characterised by medium levels of risk, impact, and business or technical complexity based on user requirements. You can select appropriate design standards, methods and tools, and ensure they are applied effectively. You can review the systems designs of others to ensure the selection of appropriate technology, efficient use of resources and integration of multiple systems and technology. (Skill level: practitioner)  
• Systems integration. You can define the integration build. You can co-ordinate build activities across systems, including testing activities of Service Transition and release validation. (Skill level: practitioner)  
• User focus. You can collaborate with user researchers and can represent users internally.   
•  You can explain the difference between user needs and the desires of the user.   
• You can champion user research to focus on all users.
• You can prioritise and define approaches to understand the user story, guiding others in doing so.   
• You can offer recommendations on the best tools and methods to use. (Skill level: practitioner)   

Desirable skills and experience: 

• Working within Agile Teams
• Experience of ETL/ELT Technologies, e.g. Informatica/PowerCenter/ODI/OWB
• Oracle EBS HR/Payroll or equivalent ERP products

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £43,080, Ministry of Defence contributes £11,631 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

Please ensure that at the application and interview stages of the campaign you review the Success Profiles Framework to assist you in the demonstration of your skills and experience.

Your suitability for the role will be assessed using the Success Profile elements that have been chosen for this campaign. Each element will be scored accordingly, and the successful candidate will be appointed on merit.

Applications will be sifted on all Success Profile elements, but in the event of a high number of applications, an initial sift will be conducted on your

Primary: Experience - CV Secondary: Experience - Personal statement.  In this instance the remaining elements will be tested at interview. 

At application stage you will be assessed against the following:

Experience: 

• CV: Please include - Job History, Full qualification details & Previous skills/experience 
• Personal Statement: In no more than 1000 words, Please provide information of how you meet the criteria set out in the job description. You may wish to further include examples of how you have tackled similar tasks or demonstrated the skills outlines in the job advert. 

Technical: ( Lead data engineer )

• Data development process
• Data integration design
• Technical understanding
• Data Innovation

At interview 1 you will be assessed against the following:

Behaviours:

• Leadership 
• Seeing the Big Picture 
• Making Effective Decisions 
• Communicating and Influencing 

Experience: 

• Personal Statement 

Those that pass the minimum score criteria will then be invited to Interview 2 where you will be assessed on the following for the application and the Digital Skills Allowance Assessment:

At interview 2 stage you will be assessed against the following:

Technical: ( Lead data engineer )

• Data development process
• Data integration design
• Technical understanding
• Data Innovation

In the rare case where individuals have exact matching scores, the order of merit will be determined based on the behaviour scores at interview in the following order:

1. Experience - Personal statement
2. Behaviour - Leadership
3. Technical -  Data development process
4. Technical -  Data integration design
5. Technical -  Technical understanding
6. Technical -  Data Innovation
7. Behaviour - Seeing the Big Picture
8. Behaviour - Making Effective Decisions
9. Behaviour - Communicating and Influencing

If candidate scores are still exact, the merit order will then be determined on the sift score in the below order or priority:

1. Experience - CV
2. Technical -  Data development process
3. Technical -  Data integration design
4. Technical - Technical understanding
5. Technical -  Data Innovation
6. Experience - Personal statement

We want to offer opportunities to all who are successful at interview for our roles, but this isn’t always possible, so we do hold candidates on an active reserve list for 12 months. 

Application sifting is scheduled to take place at the end of January 2024

Interviews are currently taking place  remotely and will be conducted early February 2024

A minimum of 2 full working days’ notice will be provided for interviews.

We endeavour to stick to these dates, but these are subject to change around business needs.

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equality of opportunity. There is a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

If you need to advise us that you need additional help or reasonable adjustments for the recruitment process, please contact: DBS-EnhancedRecruitmentTeam@mod.gov.uk

MOD Recruitment Satisfaction Survey – we may contact you regarding your experience to help us improve our customer satisfaction. The survey is voluntary and anonymous. You may however be given the opportunity to provide additional information to help us improve our service which includes the collection of some personal data as defined by the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). The MOD Privacy Notice sets out how we will use your personal data and your rights.

As a result of the changes to the UK immigration rules which came into effect on 1 January 2021, the Ministry of Defence will only offer sponsorship for a skilled worker visa under the points-based system, where a role has been deemed to be business critical. 

The role currently being advertised has not been assessed as business critical and is therefore NOT open to applications from those who will require sponsorship under the points-based system. Should you apply for this role and be found to require sponsorship, your application will be rejected, and any provisional offer of employment withdrawn. 

To assist with your application please find attached -  

DBS Candidate Information Guide - Working for Defence Business Services - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) 

Technical skills Framework guide - https://ddat-capability-framework.service.gov.uk/index.html

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.