Lead DevOps Engineer

Enable Recite to make this website accessible Job description Length of employment: Job Summary: Are you an experienced DevOps Engineer with a passion for automation excellence? Would you love the opportunity to promote technical evolution within the organisation across multiple teams? If so, come join us as a Lead DevOps Engineer! We want driven, passionate and enthusiastic Lead DevOps Engineers, who can contribute to our demanding and exciting digital services that help and support our UK citizens. A fantastic opportunity for someone who would like to be part of delivering real value to the people that need help during their lives. We want enthusiastic Lead DevOps Engineers, who can contribute to our demanding and exciting digital services that help and support our UK citizens. A fantastic opportunity for someone who would like to be part of delivering real value to the people that need help during their lives. As a Lead DevOps you will work acrossa number ofmulti-functional agile delivery teams, guiding and supporting DevOps Engineers to build in quality, using industry best practices, to the products that make up our citizen services. You will also be responsible for leading and driving our Engineering community ensuring DWP and DevOps practices evolve in line with technology advances. If you are an experienced DevOps Engineer with a passion for automation excellence this could be the role for you; we have vacancies in the following functional areas: The Child Maintenance team are looking for a Lead DevOps Engineer to help ensure the integrity of their services. Data and Analytics are looking for 2 Lead DevOps Engineers to support the data platforms in support of smarter, faster data driven decisions. Citizen Information are looking for a Lead DevOps Engineers to support building shared capabilities and improving developer experience. Please note this role requires you to pass Security Check clearance. For further information, please see \’Selection process details\’. Job Description: In the Citizen Information team, you will be leading our DevOps engineers to build shared tooling and capabilities to improve their developer platform to improve developer experience and software development life cycle to release value faster with improved quality. They work with Kubernetes and AWS cloud services to provide an environment where the teams can iterate and innovative in an Agile way to really deliver for our users and you will be part of the team providing strategy and direction to the engineers alongside you. Working across the Children\’s area you will be pushing a mindset change to foster engineering ownership, and the importance of the integrity and maintenance of the services we deliver. The team underpins all of Children Digitals ambitions via the creation and maintenance of a stable, well-defined framework for all teams across Children to utilise when developing and building services that support Child Maintenance, securing money for children. The team is responsible for building and developing shared components and functionalities that support teams across Children deliver their critical online services to clients ensuring they are efficient and maintained. Data and Analytics are looking for 2 highly skilled and motivated Lead DevOps Engineers to join their Data & Analytics team, one in Data Platforms and one in Data Enablement. You will drive the design, automation and optimization of our cloud-based data platforms and products. In this pivotal role you will you will lead DevOps best practice across platform and data engineering, analytics and AI/ML pipelines, ensuring reliable, scalable, secure delivery of data products and services that are critical to delivering services to 22m citizens, and, in supporting smarter, faster, joined-up data-driven decision making using interoperable data from across DWP, other government departments and external partners. As a Lead DevOps Engineer in any of these areas you will be required to use modern tooling to develop CI/CD pipelines and DevOps toolchains where you will strive to put automation at the heart of everything you do. You will have a proven experience in the development, deployment and support of software applications and services that are focused on stability, availability and quality. You will promote the latest Engineering and DevOps practices, standards and processes then lead the Engineering community to deliver the strategic DevOps vision. You will be required to build and maintain relationships, reconciling priorities and agreeing common action, working with the Lead DevOps Engineering community to ensure security, stability and capacity are embedded in the development and deployment of our citizen services. You will be required to make complex decisions, involving a wide range of solutions, possibly affecting a number of work areas within the organisation. You will work closely with senior leaders, sharing information, providing advice and support around technical choices, implementation approach, resourcing and identifying skills gaps and key dependencies within our technical teams. We also have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes: Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours. Generous annual leave – at least 25 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (pro-rata for part time employees), plus 9 days public and privilege leave. Support for financial wellbeing, including interest-free season ticket loans for travel, a cycle to work scheme and an employee discount scheme. Health and wellbeing support including our Employee Assistance Programme for specialist advice and counselling and the opportunity to join HASSRA a first-class programme of competitions, activities and benefits for its members (subscription payable monthly). Family friendly policies including enhanced maternity and shared parental leave pay after 1 year\’s continuous service. Funded learning and development to support progress in your role and career. This includes industry recognised qualifications and accreditations, coaching, mentoring and talent development programmes. An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join professional and interpersonal networks including Women\’s Network, National Race Network, National Disability Network (THRIVE) and many more. This job role may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in their DWP office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and your office will be your contractual place of work. The number of days that anyone will be able to work at home will be determined primarily by business need but personal circumstances and other relevant circumstances will also be taken into account. If you are successful, any opportunities for hybrid working, including whether a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for you, will be discussed with you prior to you taking up your post. Salary Information Pay for this role is from £72,664 to £89,995. The maximum salary for the grade is £77,740, however a Digital Allowance of up to £12,255 per annum is available for exceptional candidates. Digital Allowance is non-salary, and non-pensionable, and is classed as a temporary allowance. It is reviewed annually where it could be retained, amended, or removed. Our offer to successful candidates will be based on an assessment of your skills and experience as demonstrated at interview. Existing Civil Servants who secure a new role on lateral transfer should maintain their current salary. Existing Civil Servants who gain promotion may move to the bottom of the grade pay scale or 10% increase in salary whichever would be the greater. When giving details in your employment history and personal statement you should highlight your experience in line with essential criteria below: Lead criterion: Experience leading and managing high-performing DevOps/platform engineering teams, including line management, career development, coaching, and driving delivery against strategic goals. Strong cross-functional leadership and stakeholder engagement skills, with experience coordinating across business areas, reporting to senior leadership, balancing competing priorities, and steering team efforts toward shared objectives. Demonstrated ability to own and maintain technical roadmaps, ensuring systems and products are aligned with business needs, remain compliant and secure, and have forward plans for scaling, lifecycle management, and tech debt reduction. Proven experience designing, delivering, and scaling complex cloud-based systems in AWS and/or Azure, with full ownership across the lifecycle-from architecture and deployment through optimisation, upgrades, and decommissioning. Significant proven experience in designing and implementing Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and related as-code paradigms -including Configuration-as-Code, Policy-as-Code, and Pipeline-as-Code – with a focus on establishing enterprise-grade scaleable patterns, governance, and security. Demonstrated ability to define standards and reusable modules that promote consistency, compliance, and operational excellence across teams and environments. Track record of architecting, implementing, and evolving secure, resilient, and scalable CI/CD pipelines, aligned with DevOps best practices and integrated with quality, security, and observability tooling. An initial sift may be conducted using the lead criteria stated above. Candidates who pass the initial sift will progress to a full sift. If you would like to learn more about the role, please contact richard.hanley@dwp.gov.uk. Stage 1: Application Your application will consist of three parts: 1. A Personal Details application form. 2. Employment history – this should contain your work experience and any skills, qualifications and accomplishments relevant to the jobs you have completed based on the essential criteria. 3. Personal statement – up to 1000 words. This statement should be used to provide examples of how you meet the essential criteria listed in the Person specification. Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form. The sift panel will use the information in your employment history and personal statement to assess your experience, skills and knowledge against the essential criteria. You will be provided with one combined overall assessment score for both your CV and Personal Statement. An initial sift will be conducted using the lead criterion stated above. Candidates who pass the initial sift will progress to a full sift. For Hints and Tips on completing your application visit Applying for jobs at DWP Digital. Applications will be sifted at regular intervals from the date the posts are advertised. Please apply as soon as you can, do not wait until the end of the campaign. Important Information You will be asked to complete your employment history. Any information that you would customarily share on a CV should therefore be entered onto the application form. Personal details that could be used to identify you including your name, contact details and address must be removed for your application to be considered. If your employment history/personal statement contains any personal details your application will be withdrawn. We recognise that AI may be helpful when applying for this role, but it is important to use it in the right way. Read the DWP AI Candidate Guide to understand how you can make the best use of GenAI while ensuring your application remains authentic and effective. Stage 2: Interview If you\’re successful at sift stage you will be invited to a video interview via Microsoft Teams. There, you will be assessed against the experiences listed in the essential criteria . Interviews will take place from early July 2025. Interview dates to be confirmed. Further information Find out more about Working for DWP If high application volumes are received, the benchmark for candidates to proceed to the next stage may be raised. In line with our commitment to the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS), we aim to advance all candidates applying under the DCS who meet the minimum standard. However, we may only progress those candidates who best meet the required standards. A reserve list may be held for a period of 6 months from which further appointments can be made. All successful candidates and those placed on reserve will be posted in merit list order by location. Security Clearance Requirement You must meet the security requirements before you can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check. For meaningful checks to be carried out, you will need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time, to enable appropriate checks to be carried out and produce a result which provides the required level of assurance. Whilst a lack of UK residency in itself is not necessarily a bar to a security clearance, and expectation of UK residency may range from 3 to 5 years. Failure to meet the residency requirements needed for the role may result in the withdrawal of provisional jobs offers. For further information on National Security Vetting please visit the Demystifying Vetting website . The Civil Service values honesty and integrity and expects all candidates to abide by these principles. Please ensure that all examples provided in your application are taken directly from your own experience and that you describe the examples in your own words. Applications will be screened and if evidence of plagiarism or copying examples/answers from other sources is found, your application will be withdrawn. Internal DWP candidates may also face disciplinary action. Reasonable Adjustment At DWP we value diversity and inclusion and actively encourage and welcome applications from everyone, including those that are underrepresented in our workforce. We consider visible and non-visible disabilities, neurodiversity or learning differences, chronic medical conditions, or mental ill health. Examples include dyslexia, epilepsy, autism, chronic fatigue, or schizophrenia. If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should: Contact Government Recruitment Service via as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs. Complete the \”Reasonable Adjustments\” section in the \”Additional requirements\” page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you\’re deaf, a Language Service Professional. For further information on reasonable adjustments, terms and conditions and how we recruit visit the How we recruit page. Feedback Celebrating Dyslexia: Unlocking my ‘Dyslexic Thinking’ at Work Am I Normal Yet? Reflecting on LGBT+ Visibility and Acceptance Why Is Everyone Mumbling? How I Realised Hearing Loss Isn\’t Always Noticeable Supporting long-term carers with compassion and flexibility #J-18808-Ljbffr