Senior DevOps Engineer - UK Health Security Agency - SEO

Location

Hybrid working; Core HQ’s - Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, London/Canary Wharf

About the job

Job summary

The UKHSA Development and Operations team leads the digital transformation of UKHSA to make it a more data driven, customer focused, digital organisation. 

DevOps Engineers at UKHSA work collaboratively with developers and stakeholders such as Data Scientists and Public Health officials to deliver software which helps to drive forward the mission of the agency. We employ modern best practices to deliver projects quickly, safely, and cost-effectively.

We are seeking 3 (three) Senior DevOps Engineers who 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.

They will have skills building out cloud enabled systems and creating specifications and designs to meet our cloud hosting requirements. This will involve working with other stakeholders to translate requirements into visual technical designs and explore different approaches to solving problems.

Job description

They 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. They 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.

They will also 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.  They 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.

They will work to optimise the development processes and identify process optimisation opportunities and contribute to the implementation of proposed solutions. They will initially work mostly with AWS and Azure, 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 the services currently running.

They 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.  They 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.

Further Responsibilities 

• Develop and rollout continuous integration and deployment pipelines across UKHSA’s Digital’s estate of apps and services using containerisation techniques where appropriate and working collaboratively with other staff.
• Work with technical colleagues to implement DevOps methodology using practices recommended in the GDS Digital by Default Service Standard.
• 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 deployment.
• 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 work with the Lead/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
• Work 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
• Seek to continuously improve their knowledge of work areas, bringing 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.
• Work to continuously meet project deadlines and manage time effectively to deliver projects on budget.

They will also 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.  They 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).

The above is only an outline of the tasks, responsibilities and outcomes required of this role.  You will carry out any other duties as may reasonably be required.  The job description and person specification may be reviewed on an ongoing basis in accordance with the changing needs of the organisation.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

• Educated to degree level in relevant subject such as Computer Science with a software development core or equivalent level of qualification or experience of working at a similar level within Digital Technology.
• Proficiency/experience with DevOps approaches to application testing and deployment.
• Experience of automated deployment of applications and services to AWS (Amazon Web Services) or Azure.
• Experience in design, development and support of CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) pipelines in a microservice architecture.
• Experience of implementing a continuous integration platform (such as Gitlab CI, Github Actions or 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).
• Able 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 define 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, and in relation to management systems.

Desirable Criteria

• 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.