Senior Application Support Engineer (Ref: 84088)
Ministry of Justice
About the job
Job summary
This position is based nationally.Job description
We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued and a sense of belonging. To find out more about how we do this visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity.
Senior Application Support Engineer
Location: National*
Closing Date: 18th February
Interviews: 28 & 29 February
Grade: SEO (MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer)
Salary: London: £45,824 - £50,039 (with an allowance up to £2,251) National: £39,868 - £43,535 (with an allowance up to £2,057)
Working pattern: Full time, Flexible working, Job-share and part-time (min. 80%) also considered
Contract Type: Permanent
Vacancy number: 84088
*We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your local office. Office locations can be found ON THIS MAP
The Role
This is a great opportunity for an experienced Senior Application Support Engineer to work as part of the Digital Prisons Service Live Support Team, responsible for supporting users of our portfolio of Digital Services alongside our growing Digital Prisons product teams. The role is pivotal in continuing to provide a high quality service to our colleagues across HMPPS, and forms a key part of Digital Prison’s delivery practice.
Digital Prison Service exists to create the tools that support the Prison Service so that they can provide decent, safe and productive places to live and work, and support prisons to protect the public and reduce reoffending by rehabilitating the people in our care through education and employment. Our Live Services mission is to ensure that the Digital Prison’s underpinning technology and services operate for those accessing our digital services throughout the HMPPS estate.
Key Responsibilities:
The Live Service Support team is responsible for the overall support and reliability of Digital Prisons Services.
This will include being able to:
Provide expert-level support for our cloud-based digital products and legacy systems, including troubleshooting technical issues, analysing logs, code, and diagnosing root causes of incidents.
Monitor and analyse performance metrics of cloud-based applications, identifying opportunities for optimization and working with the Site Reliability Engineering team to implement enhancements to improve scalability, reliability, and responsiveness.
Implement proactive monitoring and maintenance strategies to detect and prevent potential issues before they impact users, ensuring high availability and reliability of digital products.
Work closely with development teams, site reliability engineers, and third-party vendors to facilitate seamless deployment, integration, and maintenance of cloud-based services.
Ensure incidents are being processed in accordance with agreed service level agreements
Prioritise multiple high priority issues at any given time without sacrificing SLA commitments.
Collaborate on major incident resolutions
Collaborate with internal teams to escalate and address critical issues promptly.
Confident in technical understanding of our end to end services
Create and maintain documentation related to application support processes, known issues, and resolutions
Identify opportunities for process improvements and efficiency gains in management of services
Provide “Out Of Hours” Major Incident support. The out of hours period is defined as weekday evenings from 18.00 through to 08.00 the next day, and 24/7 across weekends and bank holidays.
As the team grows you will be required to line manage a number of application support engineers.
To help picture your life at MoJ Justice Digital please take a look at our blog and our Digital and Technology strategy 2025
Person Specification
Who you are:
Availability and Capacity Management. You can manage service components to ensure they meet business needs and performance targets.
Continual service improvement. You can identify process optimisation opportunities with guidance, and contribute to the implementation of proposed solutions.
Incident Management. You can lead the investigation and resolution of incidents.
Ownership and initiative. You can take accountability for issues that occur and be proactive in searching for potential problems and achieve excellent user outcomes.
Problem Management. You can initiate and monitor actions to investigate patterns and trends to resolve problems effectively, consult specialists where required to determine the appropriate remedy and assist with its implementation and determine preventative measures.
Technical understanding. You can understand the core technical concepts related to the role, and apply them with guidance.
Willingness to be assessed against the requirements for BPSS clearance.
We welcome the unique contribution diverse applicants bring and do not discriminate on the basis of culture, ethnicity, race, nationality or national origin, age, sex, gender identity or expression, religion or belief, disability status, sexual orientation, educational or social background or any other factor.
Our values are Purpose, Humanity, Openness and Together. Find out more here about how we celebrate diversity and an inclusive culture in our workplace.
Benefits
37 hours per week and flexible working options including working from home, working part-time, job sharing, or working compressed hours.
We are committed to nurturing our staff and provide lots of training and development opportunities with learning platforms such as: Linux Academy, O’Reilly, Pluralsight, Microsoft Learning, Civil Service Learning, GDS Academy, etc.
10% dedicated time to learning and development with a budget of £1000 a year per person
Generous civil service pension based on defined benefit scheme, with employer contributions of 26-30% depending on salary.
25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the Kings’ birthday. 5 additional days of leave once you have reached 5 years of service.
Compassionate maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave policies, with up to 26 weeks leave at full pay, 13 weeks with partial pay, and 13 weeks further leave. And maternity support/paternity leave at full pay for 2 weeks, too!
Wellbeing support including access to the Calm app.
Nurturing professional and interpersonal networks including those for Carers & Childcare, Gender Equality, PROUD and SPIRIT
Bike loans up to £2500 and secure bike parking (subject to availability and location)
Season ticket loans, childcare vouchers and eye-care vouchers.
5 days volunteering paid leave.
Free membership to BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.
Some offices may have a subsidised onsite Gym.
How to Apply
Candidates must submit a CV and a suitability statement of no more than 500 words which describes how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above.
In Justice Digital, we recruit using a combination of the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process:
Working together
Managing a quality service
Changing and Improving
A diverse panel will review your application against the Person Specification above.
Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a 1-hour panel interview held via video conference.
Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on experience, as well as knowledge of data analytics processes will be conducted prior to the sift.
Should you be unsuccessful in the role that you have applied for but demonstrate the capability for a role at a lower level, we reserve the right to discuss this opportunity with you and offer you the position without needing a further application.
A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months, from which further appointments may be made.
Terms & Conditions
Please review our Terms & Conditions which set out the way we recruit and provide further information related to the role and salary arrangements.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact recruitment@digital.justice.gov.uk
Person specification
Please refer to attached job description.Benefits
Alongside your salary of £39,868, Ministry of Justice contributes £10,804 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
Candidates must submit a CV and a suitability statement of no more than 500 words which describes how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above.
In Justice Digital, we recruit using a combination of the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process:
Working together
Managing a quality service
Changing and Improving
A diverse panel will review your application against the Person Specification above.
Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a 1-hour panel interview held via video conference.
Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on experience, as well as knowledge of data analytics processes will be conducted prior to the sift.
Should you be unsuccessful in the role that you have applied for but demonstrate the capability for a role at a lower level, we reserve the right to discuss this opportunity with you and offer you the position without needing a further application.
A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months, from which further appointments may be made.
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
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.