Senior Developer (Python) in Watford

At the heart of everything we do is our vision to change lives every day, and our mission to grow The National Lottery responsibly and champion its impact. We are Allwyn UK, part of the Allwyn Entertainment Group – a multi-national lottery operator with a market-leading presence across Europe which includes: Czech Republic, Austria, Greece, Cyprus & Italy, and the US. While the main contribution of The National Lottery to society is through the funds to good causes, at Allwyn we put our purpose and values at the heart of everything we do.

Join us as we embark on a once-in-a-lifetime, large-scale transformation journey by creating a National Lottery that delivers more money to good causes.

If you need any assistance or adjustments to this job description or in the application process, please contact a member of the talent team at careers@allwyn.co.uk and we’ll be happy to help.

A bit about the role:

The ideal candidate will have strong knowledge and experience in AWS, Terraform, Ansible and GitHub Actions, along with strong Python programming skills and experience in CI/CD workflows. You will assist teams to ensure standards are followed and maintained. This role requires a proactive individual who can troubleshoot at a low level, standardise solutions, and implement best practices across multiple platforms and technologies.

What you’ll be doing:

• Drive the design, deployment, and management of the automation and monitoring platforms to support our applications and services.
• Establish and enforce best practices for security, compliance, and cost management.
• Build & maintain the monitoring and alerting infrastructure and configuration.
• Develop dashboards to visualise key information to business stakeholders.
• Configure automation for new system integrations using existing custom frameworks and manage job configurations using Control-M scheduling.
• Develop new automated processes making use of programming knowledge.
• Maintain a fundamental understanding of the Allwyn infrastructure and gaming platforms to aid with capacity planning and troubleshooting.
• Build GitHub Actions automations to deploy code into test & production environments.

Work Management:

• Work with the Tech Lead and Technical Delivery Manager to orchestrate work for the team, breaking down epics and stories into smaller stories and tasks that the engineers can work on in a day, and monitor these.
• Ensure that work is of a suitable quality for the team.
• Collaborate with product owners, business analysts and delivery managers to shape and refine the backlog.
• Make sure that the work management system ticket status is kept up to date in near real time.

What experience we’re looking for:

• Experience with application monitoring tools such as AppDynamics, along with administration skills in Sensu, Logz.io, Consul, Hashicorp Vault, Grafana, Graphite & InfluxDB, or equivalents.
• Comprehensive practical experience with AWS, use of Terraform & Ansible and past use of ECS & Fargate, containerisation using Docker to build custom images.
• Experience using serverless technologies, for example Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, EventBridge.
• Exhibit strong object-oriented programming skills in Python, with practical experience in writing Lambda functions and/or complex scripts.
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools, code linting, and experience with GitHub Actions.
• Significant experience with low-level *nix administration and troubleshooting.
• Possess a strong understanding of network and web technologies, including the TCP/IP stack, HTTP, HTTPS, RESTful APIs, certificates & encryption.
• Have some web development experience using modern technologies, preferably NodeJS, Java or equivalent.
• Experience using JIRA and Confluence for project management and collaboration.
• Have a basic understanding of Azure services.
• Be an excellent communicator, able to collaborate at different levels, across diverse skill teams.
• Demonstrate strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a strategic mindset, capable of assessing risks and proposing effective mitigation actions based on professional judgement.
• Be highly self-motivated, proactive, and capable of working both independently and as part of a team.
• Handle ambiguity, competing requirements, and shifting priorities.
• Be open to self-disruption, modernization, and simplification.
• Demonstrate a desire for consistency and automation of everything.

Key Measures of Success:

• Business Expertise: Has developed skills to help support the TNL infrastructure.
• Product & Service Expertise: Has developed a key understanding of the products and services offered by the business and the key stakeholders for each area.
• Delivering Solutions (Problem Solving): Solves problems by selecting from a range of experience and existing solutions.
• Delivering Solutions (Planning & Organising): Prioritises and organises own work to meet agreed upon deadlines and quality/accuracy standards.
• Delivering Solutions (Continuous Improvement & Process): Highlights new opportunities to continuously improve current working practices within own team.
• Impact (Decision Making): Makes decisions related to own work. Receives regular but moderate supervision and guidance.
• Impact (Influence): Provides information and advice to business customers on basic product/service offerings. Is aware of the effect of actions on external relationships.

About us:

At Allwyn, we are dedicated to changing lives and growing the National Lottery responsibly, championing its positive impact on people, places, and the planet.

Innovation - We pride ourselves on it! We’re constantly looking for new ways to excite our customers, bringing new products to market to enjoy which is all supported by our responsible play values and making them accessible to all.

Giving back – Did you know that playing the lottery generates around £30m a week for charities and good causes in the UK? Our aim is to have doubled this number by the end of the first 10-year license.

Sustainability – Our aim is to become a net zero national lottery. We have 2030 targets to decarbonise our operations and energy. We’ve already transitioned to renewable energy providers, made our London and Watford offices zero gas, and ensured our fleet consists of low-emission vehicles. In addition, we’re working with our value chain partners to develop a net zero target date.

Empowering every voice – We believe in creating a culture where everyone feels they belong, can be themselves, has access to opportunities and can thrive for the benefit of good causes. Our diverse teams are working hard to make all parts of The National Lottery inclusive – whether people play a game in a store or online - because when everyone can play, everyone wins.

Our people are more than colleagues - they’re winners, driving positive change and making a real difference in communities.

We are a Disability Confident Leader which means we’ve taken proactive steps to ensure our workplace is accessible and inclusive for disabled and neurodivergent colleagues and candidates. As part of this we offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential requirements of the job.

An inclusive reward offering with wellbeing at the centre:

Our benefits are built to support you at every stage of life. From wellbeing and financial security to enjoying more of what you love, our benefit offerings help you thrive at work and at home.

• Company Bonus Scheme
• Matched pension contributions up to 8.5%
• 26 days annual leave + 2 Life Days (and bank holidays)
• Single Private Health Cover
• Complimentary Private Medical
• Income Protection
• Flexible Benefits – EV Scheme, Money Coach, Will Writing, Mortgage Advice, Dental and Eye Care Schemes.
• Enhanced Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity, Adoption)
• Wellness Allowance £500
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Discounted Health Assessments
• Volunteering Days
• Matched Funding