About the job

Job summary

We’re looking for an exceptional DevOps Engineer - LMA to help us make a difference to our planet.

As our DevOps Engineer - LMA, the job may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in the office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and the location advertised will be your contractual place of work.

Our opportunity is full time, 37 hours per week. Our people are at the heart of what we do and we'll do our best to agree a working pattern that works for everyone.

World changing work

From science to technology, from meteorology to management, and from planning to communication, our expertise helps us stand out as the authority on weather accuracy and climate prediction. We help individuals, industries and government to make better decisions to stay safe and thrive. This is the Met Office. This is who we are.

• We’re a force for good - focusing on our environmental and social impact
• We’re experts by nature - always learning and developing to do things better
• We live and breathe it - putting our purpose at the heart of decision-making
• We’re better together - understanding partnerships and inclusivity make us greater
• We keep evolving - pushing boundaries to make tomorrow better for our customers

Job description

Your world of expertise

You will be joining the Logging, Monitoring and Alerting (LMA) team within the Met Office, focused on helping developers, engineers, scientists and support staff manage the health and well-being of the numerous services that make up the Met Office business. Your team will be multi-disciplined, covering the breadth of the Met Office estate, including Cloud based services and on-premise systems, ranging from the supercomputer to a Raspberry Pi.

LMA are responsible for providing a toolset to support the consistent process for gathering, storing and accessing log and metric data across the whole Met Office estate, whether the source is on premise, built in the Cloud or consumed as Software as a Service and a consistent method of alerting our 24x7 support teams to issues within systems and services, through a single "pane of glass", reducing the chances of issues being missed, the training overhead on the support teams and reducing the overall response time.

Your key duties

To lead work packages on the evolution, support, and development of a range of services within the Logging, Monitoring and Alerting Team, with a focus on consolidation and optimisation of services onto Cloud computing.

To support the Met Office developer/support community, providing technical expertise, help, and guidance on how to integrate new systems into our service portfolio, including helping troubleshoot/fix problems with existing integrations.

You will be joining this busy team, as we continue to exploit Cloud based services and embrace Agile ways of working. You will be gaining valuable experience, working on a mixture of on premise and Cloud based platforms, helping to develop and operationally support services that span both environments.

Person specification

Essential Criteria, skills and experience:

1. Collaborative team player with experience of working within an operational IT environment. (We’re better together)
2. Experience of working within a Cloud computing environment, developing, and delivering services.
3. Ability to taking ownership and lead on work packages/projects, managing resources to fulfil expected outcomes, conveying technically complex information effectively with customers and stakeholders at all levels.
4. A strong technical background and a genuine ability to solve complex technical problems, demonstrating you have also considered the ‘bigger picture’, ensuring service continuity and customer satisfaction. (We’re experts by nature)
5. Experience of writing quality code, ideally in Python.

Desirable Criteria: 

We encourage you to apply if you believe you meet our essential criteria, but we’re also keen to discover if you have:

1. Ability to coach and mentor junior colleagues, to facilitate knowledge sharing and improve wider team capability.
2. Awareness of ITIL best practice and use of IT service Management tools such as JIRA/ServiceNow to help manage the team’s workload.
3. Experience of development and delivery using Agile principles.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £33,794, Met Office contributes £9,124 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

How to apply

If you share our values, we’d love to hear from you. Apply below with your CV and provide evidence against each of the essential criteria in the supporting statement questionnaire. We recommend candidates use the CARL method (Context, Action, Result and Learning) for presenting evidence of experience and skills.

Closing date Sunday 09/06/2024 at 23:59 with first stage interviews commencing from 24/06/2024. You will hear from us once the closing date has passed.

How we can help

If you are considering applying and need support to do so, please contact us via careers@metoffice.gov.uk . You can request adjustments either within your application or by contacting us. Should you be offered an interview, please be aware there may be a selection exercise which could include a presentation, written test or a scenario-based activity. You can select in your application to be considered under the Disability Confident Scheme. To be invited to interview/assessment under this scheme, your application must meet the essential criteria for the role.

We understand that great minds don’t always think alike and as an equal opportunities employer we welcome applications from those with all protected characteristics. We recruit on merit, fairness, and open competition in line with the Civil Service Code.

We can only accept applications from those eligible to live and work in the UK - please refer to GOV.UK for information. We require Security clearance, for which you need to have resided in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years to be eligible. You will need to achieve full security clearance within your first 6 months with us.

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

Security

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.