About the job

Job summary

Job title – Lead DevOps Engineer

Profession- Development & Operations  

Directorate – Technology

Full Time equivalent - 37.5 hours

No of Roles – 1

Contract Type – Permanent

Location – Hybrid

UKHSA operates a hybrid working model where business needs allow.  This provides us with greater flexibility about how and where we work, to get the best from our workforce. As a hybrid worker, you will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of your contractual working hours (approximately 3 days a week pro rata,(averaged over a month) working at one of UKHSA's locations (Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, and London).  Specialist or regional roles will be based at the appropriate UKHSA site. For certain roles, some additional flexibility may be possible, which will be agreed upon with the hiring manager based on individual requirements and business needs.

Working Pattern – Full Time /Hybrid Working/ Flexible Working

Grade & Salary – Grade 7. 

National banding -£51,824- £61,414 per annum. Outer London -£53,812- £63,252 per annum. Inner London - £55,799- £65,089 per annum.

This role comes with a Market Pay Supplement of up to £10,000

The internal roles rules apply to existing Civil Servants, i.e. level transfers move on current salary or the pay range minimum, transfers on promotion move to new pay range minimum or receive 10% increase. Either case is determined by whichever is the highest.

This role is to be appointed under Civil Service Terms & Conditions. Full details on the T&C’s are found https://www.ukhsa.reed.com/.

Closing Date – 07/01/2024. 23:55pm. Unfortunately, late applications will not be considered

Interview Date – W/C 22/01/2024  Please note, these dates are subject to change.

 

Introduction   

The UKHSA Development and Operations team leads the digital transformation of UKHSA to make it a more data driven, customer focused, digital organisation. We do this by delivering services which meet and maintain the Government Digital Service (GDS)

UKHSA Development and Operations team is based within the Technology Directorate.  We have a team of roughly 40 people including content designers, developers, product managers, strategists and policy experts. We blend expertise from private and Government sectors and we work with a wide range of partners and suppliers.  We also manages UKHSA’s presence on GOV.UK, is transitioning UKHSA’s websites to GOV.UK and NHS Choices, runs the UKHSA intranet, and contains a services team to drive improvements in the services operated by UKHSA colleagues.

 

Overview of Job

 

As a DevOps Engineer, you will have experience of designing and architecting highly-available services on a cloud platform such as AWS, and of implementing continuous integration technologies such as Jenkins, and orchestration tools such as Ansible or Terraform.

As a DevOps Engineer, you will work to optimise our development processes and identify process optimisation opportunities and contribute to the implementation of proposed solutions. You will initially work mostly with AWS, OpenStack and OpenShift developing and supporting systems and infrastructure through to production using modern continuous integration/deployment (CI/CD) techniques and supporting analysis, identification, prioritisation and implementation of incremental improvements to our services currently running. You will be a good technical communicator, able to improve developer experience through tools and technologies in collaboration with the development teams throughout the development lifecycle to live service and decommissioning. You will maintain the security, confidentiality and integrity of our cloud services by implementing relevant information security standards and ensure compliance with relevant legislations and regulations.

You will excel at architecting cloud enabled systems and creating specifications and designs to meet our cloud hosting requirements, working with other stakeholders to translate requirements into visual technical designs and explore different approaches to solving problems. You will be capable of reviewing system designs to ensure selection of appropriate technology, design standards, methods, and tools and efficient use of resources and integration of multiple systems and technology. You will be a systems integrator and able to define and co-ordinate integration build activities across systems and understand how to undertake and support integration testing.

You will understand users and be able to identify them and their needs based on evidence and translate user stories and propose design approaches or services to meet these needs and engage in meaningful interactions and relationships with users.  You must put users first, manage competing priorities excel at collaborating with users and user researchers and be able to make recommendations on the best tools and methods to use.

You will work to ensure that our cloud platforms are highly available and be able to define, analyse, plan, forecast, measure, maintain and improve all aspects of our service availability in a cost effective manner.  You will need excellent ability to manage the capability, functionality and sustainability of all of our cloud services including infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS).

Job description

 

• Lead development and rollout of a continuous integration and deployment pipeline across UKHSA’s Digital’s estate of apps and services, use of containerisation techniques where appropriate, and working collaboratively with other departments

 

• Support developers, system administrators and technical architects to use DevOps approaches to design, architect, automate and implement highly available and fault-tolerant environments (staging, quality assurance, user acceptance and production), with multi-cloud capability primarily starting on AWS or Azure

 

• Work with technical colleagues to define and implement DevOps methodology using practices recommended in the GDS Digital by Default Service Standard. Support the team to extend our continuous integration pipeline across our estate of apps and services

 

• Write infrastructure as code using Terraform or similar. Use cross-platform APIs and automation/deployment technologies such as Ansible or similar to orchestrate cloud platform deployments

 

• Support and fix bugs in existing application deployment pipelines, using standard debugging tools to track down and identify root causes. Work independently to find solutions / identify problems and to work with the Lead and Senior Developers to solve more challenging issues

 

• Review existing applications, advising and supporting colleagues on configuring and converting them for deployment to the cloud or migrate from other cloud providers. Support setting up continuous integration/deployment, developing automation scripts and advising developers on adapting them to run in the cloud

 

• Working in sprints in a multidisciplinary scrum team, collaborate and liaise with delivery managers, product owners and other stakeholders to identify business requirements and implement user stories

 

• Collaborate and work with external developers and cloud service providers to ensure UKHSA derives the maximum benefit from any third party service providers and that the right knowledge is transferred in-house

 

• Continuously seek to improve your own knowledge of work areas, bringing your learning back into the team, and embrace the agile framework of software delivery. Support colleagues to reach full agility using DevOps best practices including continuous integrations, delivery, and release

 

• Consistently work to meet project deadlines and manage time effectively to deliver projects on budget

 

We pride ourselves as being an employer of choice, where Everyone Matters promoting equality opportunity to actively encourage applications from everyone, including groups currently underrepresented in our workforce.

UKHSA ethos is to be an inclusive organisation for all our staff and stakeholders. To create, nurture and sustain an inclusive culture, where differences drive innovative solutions to meet the needs of our workforce and wider communities. We do this through celebrating and protecting differences by removing barriers and promoting equity and equality of opportunity for all.

 

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

• Educated to degree level in relevant subject such as computer science with core development element or equivalent level qualification or experience of working at a similar level in specialist area
• Proficiency/experience with DevOps approaches to application testing and deployment
• Experience of automated deployment of applications and services to AWS or Azure
• Design, development and support of CI/CD pipelines in a microservice architecture
• Experience of implementing a continuous integration platform such as Jenkins using repeatable deployment patterns
• Knowledge/experience of appropriate standards, methods and tools to design systems using DevOps principles
• Knowledge/experience of cloud automation technologies such as Ansible or Terraform
• Genuine passion and interest in DevOps and cloud automation technologies and version control software (Git)
• Ability to handle multiple tasks and workloads
• Able to identify opportunities to optimise application development/deployment and lifecycle processes and contribute to their implementation using DevOps and Agile approaches
• Able to defines the continuous integration build, co-ordinate build activities across systems and understand how to undertake and support integration testing activities
• Able to work with business and technology stakeholders to translate business problems into technical designs, specifying and designing systems using appropriate standards and tools
• An understanding of and commitment to equality of opportunity and good working relationships, both in terms of day-to-day working practices, but also in relation to management systems

 

Desirable:

• Postgraduate or professional qualification or equivalent experience in of working at a similar level in specialist area Experience with continuous integration systems (Jenkins/Travis)
• Experience of containerisation or microservices technologies and techniques, such as Docker or Kubernetes
• Good understanding of RESTful Web Services
• Good understanding of user needs and the difference between user needs and desires
• Experience of Agile principles, practices and tools such as Jira

 

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £51,824, UK Health Security Agency contributes £13,992 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

You will be required to complete an application form. This will be assessed and sifted in line with the essential criteria.

 

This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Behaviours and Experience

Stage 1: Application & Sift

As part of the application process, you will be asked to provide a Statement of Suitability in no more than 750 words providing examples of how you meet the essential criteria. It should also detail what you and your experience can bring to the role. We suggest using the STAR (situation, task, action, result) method to demonstrate real-life examples for the specified essential criteria. Please note, only information provided within the stated word count will be considered.

If you are successful at this stage, you will progress to interview

 

Stage 2: Panel Interview

This role is a two stage interview process. The first stage will consist of a technical test if successful the second interview will test the following behaviours:

• Managing a Quality Service
• Changing & Improving
• Working Together
• Delivering at Pace

 

 

Reserve List:

Candidates who pass the interview criteria but are not offered a post will be kept on a reserve list for 12 months and may be contacted if similar roles become available.

If you are interviewed for the post and do not meet the required threshold for the specified grade, your application may be assessed against a similar, lower grade role and you may be offered the post should one be available.

 

DBS - People working with government systems must complete Basic Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) checks which includes a disclosure and barring security check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed for this role is BPSS however there may be a requirement for this role to be SC cleared and you should familiarise yourself with the criteria of security clearance.

 

This role is Open to all external applicants (anyone) from outside the Civil Service (including by definition internal applicants. Appointments to roles within UKHSA will be made in accordance with the Civil Service nationality rules. These can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationality-rules This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• Nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• Nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• Nationals from the EU, EEA or Switzerland with settled or pre-settled status or who apply for either status by the deadline of the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• Relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals working in the Civil Service
• Relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals who have built up the right to work in the Civil Service
• Certain family members of the relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's Recruitment Principles.

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 welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment.

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Government baseline personnel security standard

It’s important to note that there are currently exceptions to applications being considered if your conviction relates to any of the following:

• life sentences
• arson
• sexual offences
• hate and terror offences

Some departments will also consider the specific offence against the nature of the business, i.e., a conviction for fraud may rule you out for a finance role

 

Complaint process:

The law requires that selection for appointment to the Civil Service is on merit on the basis of fair and open competition as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's Recruitment Principles. If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles, and you wish to make a complaint, in the first instance, you should contact UKHSA Public Accountability Unit via email: Complaints1@ukhsa.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission: Visit the Civil Service Commission website.

Contact Details – Sophie.Rigney@reed.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. 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.