Development Operations (DevOps) Engineer - MoD - SEO
Government Digital & Data -
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 28.97%. 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.
DBS has recently undertaken a review of its operational locations in the North West, and have consolidated all activities in Norcross, Blackpool. A further move, to the new Government Hub at Talbot Gateway in Blackpool, is scheduled to take place in 2027.
Come and join the DBS community today!
Job description
DBS DIT provides digital capability that supports corporate services across the Ministry of Defence, including Finance, Commercial, Payroll and Human Resources for Military Personnel, Civilian Personnel and Veterans. Our digital solutions comprise enterprise resource planning systems, performance management, analytics, automation, low code applications and public facing services through Gov.uk.
As a Senior DevOps Engineer, you will be at the heart of managing and optimising our development processes. Your responsibilities will include overseeing tools and testing environments, managing central code control, maintaining development standards, and writing software that automates systems. You will design secure solutions and deliver complex projects using modern development standards.
Your role will also involve troubleshooting and resolving complex service faults and designing efficient systems with medium levels of risk and complexity. You will actively collaborate with user researchers to champion user-focused design, as well as with technical and solutions architects and software developers.
In addition, you will underpin the development of both internal user services and public-facing services. You will deploy and manage applications on OpenShift and third-party PaaS solutions and manage CI/CD pipelines.
The ideal candidate will demonstrate strong leadership, effective communication, decision-making skills, and a commitment to continuous improvement and development.
Responsibilities
A Senior DevOps Engineer delivers and integrates software to form a complete DevOps toolchain. They are responsible for planning and designing large groups of stories. At this role level, you will:
- Transform technical requirements into an effective DevOps toolchain to enable product delivery
- Ensure that deployment strategies for products are repeatable, scalable and highly available
- Have deep technical knowledge, providing support to delivery teams and solving complex problems
- Manage service components and optimise development processes to ensure they meet business needs and performance indicators.
- Design secure solutions and services with controls specifically engineered to mitigate security threats.
- Use modern development standards to design, code, test, and document programs or scripts of medium-to-high complexity.
- Identify, locate, and fix complex service faults while advising others on different methodologies and types of service support.
- Design systems with medium levels of risk and complexity, ensuring the selection of appropriate technology and efficient resource use.
- Collaborate with user researchers to champion user research, prioritise and define approaches to understand the user story, and offer recommendations on the best tools and methods to use.
- Deploy, manage, and scale applications on OpenShift and third-party Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions, while setting up and managing continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines.
- Provide coaching and mentoring to more junior colleagues
Person specification
You will need the following skills for this role:
- Availability and Capacity Management (Senior DevOps Engineer) You can manage service components to ensure they meet business needs and key performance indicators (KPIs) (Skill Level: Working)
- Development process optimisation (Senior DevOps Engineer). You can work under guidance to identify process optimisation opportunities and contribute to the implementation of proposed solutions. (Skill Level: Working)
- Information Security. You can design solutions and services with security controls included, specifically engineered to mitigate security threats. (Skill Level: Practitioner).
- Modern Development Standards. You can apply modern development standards and support others in applying them. (Skill Level: Practitioner)
- Programming and Build (Software Engineering). 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. You can establish design patterns and iterate them use a variety of prototyping methods and choose the most appropriate (Skill Level: Practitioner)
- Service Support. You can identify, locate, and fix complex service faults, and advise others on different methodologies and types of service support.(Skill Level: Expert)
- Systems Design. You can design systems characterised by medium levels of risk, impact, and business or technical complexity. 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 co-ordinate build activities across systems understand how to undertake and support integration testing activities (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, and guiding others in doing so. You can offer recommendations on the best tools and methods to use. (Skill Level: Practitioner)
You will hold a recognized technical certification appropriate to the role or be prepared to obtain this while in post.
Desirable Experience:
- Experience with OpenShift: As our solutions are run on OpenShift, experience with deploying, managing, and scaling applications on this platform is highly desirable. This includes understanding of OpenShift's architecture, its project and application concepts, and its command-line client.
- Proficiency with Prometheus and Terraform: Experience with Prometheus for monitoring and alerting purposes is desirable. Familiarity with Terraform for infrastructure as code (IaC) to provision and manage any cloud, infrastructure, or service is also needed.
- Containerization and Kubernetes Experience: Hands-on experience with Docker or other containerization technologies is needed. Understanding of Kubernetes for container orchestration is also crucial, including the ability to design, deploy and manage applications within a Kubernetes environment.
- Web Development Skills: Proficiency in web development languages and frameworks such as Node.js, TypeScript, and React is desirable. Additionally, a strong understanding of HTML and CSS is needed for front-end development and user interface design.
- Experience with Platform as a Service (PaaS): Familiarity with third-party PaaS solutions is desirable, as our solutions sit on these platforms. This includes understanding of how to deploy, scale, and manage applications on platforms such as AWS, and Azure.
- Experience in CI/CD: Experience in setting up and managing continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines is desirable. This includes familiarity with tools like Jenkins, Github Actions, Argo CD GitLab CI/CD, or similar.
- Security Practices: Understanding of security best practices in relation to DevOps, including securing the software supply chain, managing secrets, and implementing access controls.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Leadership
- Communicating and Influencing
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- DDAT Technical – Prototyping
- DDAT Technical - Service Support
- DDAT Technical - Programming and Build
- DDAT Technical - Systems Integration
