Senior DevOps Engineer

Location: National*

Closing Date: 4th April

1^st-stage Interviews: w/c 20th April

Grade: Grade 7

(MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer)

Salary (for more information, please refer to the T&Cs on the bottom):

London: £63,343 – £70,725

National: £58,511 – £65,329

Working pattern: Full-time, part-time, flexible working

Contract Type: Permanent

Vacancy number: 15886

*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

We’re recruiting for 6 Senior DevOps Engineers here at Justice Digital, to be part of our warm and collaborative team.

• The MoJ’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer is transforming the department’s ability to deliver digital services, by providing development teams with ops tools and best practices embedded. The value the team delivers is multiplied across hundreds of services that make the justice system better for users. We use modern best practices like DevOps, agile and GitOps, use cloud native architectures, work in the open and prefer modern open source tools.

This role aligns against the Senior DevOps engineer role from the Government Digital and Data Framework.

• About Us: At Justice Digital, we're dedicated to leveraging technology to drive impactful change across the justice system. As a Senior DevOps Engineer, you'll play a pivotal role in enhancing access to justice and improving outcomes for users through innovative digital solutions.
• Responsibilities: You’ll be working on our acclaimed open-source public services, with user needs at the heart of everything, helping us transform Government for the future. Working as part of a multi-disciplinary team, you’ll be helping define how we do what we do, and making sure that our systems are built to be changed rapidly.
• Collaboration: You’ll collaborate closely with software developers, product managers, designers, delivery managers, technical architects and content specialists who share our vision of leveraging technology to transform government services.
• Discover More: To get a glimpse into life at Justice Digital, explore our blog.

• Technologies: We use a diverse range of technologies, and we’re seeking individuals who specialise in one or more and are eager to learn new languages and frameworks. Our tech stack includes:
  • Cloud infrastructure: AWS
  • Infrastructure-as-code: Terraform
  • Containerisation: Docker, Kubernetes
  • CI/CD deployments: GitHub Actions
  • Application code: Go, Python, Ruby, JavaScript
• Learning and Support: Once part of our team, we'll support you in mastering our tech stack, regardless of your current experience. Explore our GitHub for insights into our technologies and the services we develop and maintain.
• Our Community: Join over 150 experienced software and devops engineers who form our vibrant engineering community across the MoJ. You’ll have opportunities to mentor junior colleagues and participate in informal support networks with peers. We encourage active engagement in shaping our engineering culture and community.
• Career Development: We take pride in our supportive and effective line management. Your skills are highly valued, and we’re committed to helping you expand them within the Civil Service. You'll have opportunities to move between teams or departments, explore new technologies, and take on increased responsibilities aligned with your career goals.
• Explore Further: Dive deeper into our work and culture by visiting our Developer Blog and Justice Digital Blog.

As a Senior DevOps engineer, you will:

Technical

• Help build and run user-centred, open-source, secure web systems to serve a variety of citizen and government needs
• Be responsible for automating the deployment of systems that follow standard patterns, or components of systems that are more complex
• Manage infrastructure for multiple environments through code
• Build tools to automate infrastructure management tasks
• Support delivery teams by maintaining infrastructure-as-code patterns and automation that are repeatable, auditable, and easy to adopt
• Identify sources of friction in build, deployment and operational workflows and address them through improvements to tooling, defaults and self-service patterns

People

• Share knowledge of tools and techniques with the wider team and community, both developers and non-developers, and maintain DevOps culture.
• Help build and maintain a diverse, inclusive culture across the development community, growing awareness, inclusivity, and balance
• Help with hiring, taking part in recruitment of other web operations engineers and technical staff
• Participate in the professional development of themselves and support the growth of others
• Participate in 2nd line support during office hours, and sometimes out of hours (for which you’ll be paid an allowance and further hourly payment when on-call)

If this feels like an exciting opportunity, something you are enthusiastic about, and want to join our team please read on and apply!

Benefits

You will:

• Have hands-on experience designing, building and operating CI/CD pipelines and delivery automation.
• Have experience working with Git-based delivery practices and managing source code repositories effectively.
• Have experience operating production systems on a major public cloud provider such as AWS, Azure or GCP.
• Have experience managing environments using infrastructure-as-code or equivalent configuration-as-code approaches.
• Have experience using a programming or scripting language such as Python, Go, Ruby or JavaScript to automate tasks, improve developer workflows, or support the operation of production services.
• Have a systematic, evidence-led approach to diagnosing and resolving technical problems, weighing options and trade-offs, and improving services based on signals such as logs, metrics, user feedback and incident learnings.
• Have experience working openly across disciplines, communicating clearly with technical and non-technical colleagues.
• Actively support your own learning through knowledge-sharing, constructive feedback and inclusive ways of working.

Willingness to be assessed against the requirements for SC clearance.

We welcome the unique contribution diverse applicants bring and do not discriminate based on 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.

Six Months in – Building the Women in Engineering Working Group.

Our values are Purpose, Humanity Openness and Together. Find out more here about how we celebrate diversity and an inclusive culture in our workplace.

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service D&I Strategy.

How to Apply

1. Candidates must submit a CV and Personal Statement (750 words max), which describes how you meet the requirements from the essential criteria, set out below:

• Hands-on experience designing, building and operating CI/CD pipelines and delivery automation.
• Experience operating production systems on a major public cloud provider such as AWS, Azure or GCP.
• Experience managing environments using infrastructure-as-code or equivalent configuration-as-code approaches.
• Experience using a programming or scripting language such as Python, Go, Ruby or JavaScript to automate tasks, improve developer workflows, or support the operation of production services.

Please note, failure to provide the documents as requested for the specific role, will result in a rejection of your application.

2. A diverse panel will review your application against those requirements above.
3. Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to the 1^st-stage, virtual interview, (30 minutes max.) which will include a short whiteboarding technical exercise, which will be completed and presented during the interview.
4. Successful candidates that pass the first interview will be invited to the final, 2^nd-stage interview, a 1-hour panel interview held via video conference. This stage will cover both technical and behavioural criteria.

In Justice Digital, we recruit using a combination of the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks.

During the interview, we will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process:

• Communicating and influencing
• Developing self and others
• Making effective decisions

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.

Application Guidance

Please access the following link for guidance on how to apply and how to complete a Personal Statement

Application Guidance

Use of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Terms & Conditions

Please review our Terms & Conditions which set out how 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