TechOps Engineer (12 Month FTC) in Cheshire, Warrington

Location: Manchester (Hybrid working available)

The Escode Division

Escode, a global leader in software escrow solutions and part of NCC Group, is dedicated to protecting businesses from unforeseen disruptions. We ensure that business-critical software applications and source code are safe, secure, and always available. As a trusted intermediary for some of the world’s best-known brands, we safeguard access to vital code and digital assets, ensuring business continuity and the protection of software investments.

With over 40 years of experience, Escode pioneered the software escrow category in 1988, recognising the growing technology dependence of businesses and the need for a safety mechanism. We are proud to set industry standards and shape its direction, providing unparalleled expertise and reliability.

About the Role

The purpose of the Senior TechOps Engineer role is to contribute to the implementation, operation, monitoring and maintenance of the global IT infrastructure and platforms in order to provide high quality, stable compute platforms. You will be part of a team providing 24x7 operations of data centre/server room assets, networking, security technology, hosting (cloud), storage, hypervisor, container, backup, resilience, continuity/recovery. The team is also responsible for ensuring designs are created, implemented, tested, and deployed into the operational phase; this includes working closely with the Design Authority and other TechOps and Service Delivery teams to ensure that services and platforms are fully documented, and suitable training is made available.

Key responsibilities

• The TechOps Engineer acts as second- or third-line support for incidents, problems and changes to solutions and services, as well as building, administering, supporting and maintaining solutions as directed.
• Provide specialist technical support and assistance to projects ensuring delivery of non-functional requirements and continual service improvement.
• Coach and mentor junior team members, and assist in the provision of first-class services and consistent levels of capability as required by the organisation.
• Ensure services are integrated, and delivered as required.
• Work with and support third parties in providing infrastructure services.
• Provide input into overall management - workforce, budget, technology roadmaps, projects and tasks.
• Take primary operational responsibility for assigned services and ensure operational continuity.
• Participate in cross-functional teams as required.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Asset and configuration management: You can maintain secure configuration and accurate information, controlling IT assets in one or more significant areas, and verifying location and state of assets.
• Availability and capacity management: You know how to manage service components to ensure they meet business needs and performance targets.
• Change management: You can deal with high-impact, complex change requests. You know how to ensure that release policies, procedures and processes are applied.
• Coding and scripting: You know the scripting tools and software that are available and currently in use.
• Continual service improvement: You can identify process optimisation opportunities with guidance and contribute to the implementation of proposed solutions.
• Incident management: You can diagnose and prioritise incidents, investigating their causes and finding resolutions.
• Ownership and initiative: You can own an issue until a new owner has been found or the problem has been mitigated or resolved.
• Problem management: You can initiate and monitor actions to investigate patterns and trends to resolve problems, including consulting specialists where required. You can determine the appropriate remedy and assist with implementation of it as well as preventative measures.
• Service Management Framework knowledge: You have awareness of key ITIL or other applicable ITSM framework operational processes.
• Technical specialism: You know how to draft and maintain procedures and documentation. You can set standards for definition, security and integrity of objects and ensure conformance to these standards.
• Technical understanding: You thoroughly understand the technical concepts required for the role and can explain how these fit into the wider technical landscape.
• Testing: You can review requirements, specifications and define test conditions. You can identify issues and risks associated with work while being able to analyse and report test activities and results.
• User focus: You can identify needs and engage with users or stakeholders to collate user needs evidence. You understand and can define research that fits user needs. You can use quantitative and qualitative data about users to turn user focus into outcomes.
• IT Infrastructure: Designs, implements, administers and supports infrastructure technologies, solutions and services such as: compute, storage, networking, physical infrastructures, software, commercial off the shelf (COTS) and Open Source packages and solutions, virtual and cloud including PaaS, SaaS.
• Information Security: Has an appreciation of information security, designing solutions and services with security controls embedded, specifically engineered as mitigation against security threats as core part of the solutions and services.
• Systems design: You can design systems characterised by medium levels of risk, impact and business or technical complexity. You know how to select appropriate design standards, methods and tools and ensure they are applied effectively. You can review the systems designs of others to ensure selection of appropriate technology, efficient use of resources and integration of multiple systems and technology.
• Systems integration: You can define the integration build and produce a build definition for interfaces between systems. You are able to co-ordinate build activities across systems, and you understand how to undertake and support integration testing activities.
• Troubleshooting and problem resolution: Able to dissect a problem to its component parts to identify and diagnose root causes. Able to troubleshoot and identify problems across different technology capabilities.

Technologies: You will have strong experience/knowledge with:

• Cloud Native Services within Azure/AWS
• Implementing Cloud Infrastructure within Azure/AWS
• Infrastructure as Code
• Linux Servers RHEL/Ubuntu
• Linux Containerization
• Windows Servers 2016 Onwards
• Windows Server technologies such as Active Directory & Group Policy.
• Virtualization (VMWare KVM etc.)
• Kubernetes
• Rancher
• Datacentre server (HPE/Dell Servers/Blades) build and configuration
• Version Control (Git)
• Know at least one programming / scripting language

Experience/knowledge with one or more of the following technologies would be desirable but not essential:

• Firewall Experience
• Automation skills (Ansible, Puppet, Chef etc.)
• Ansible Automation Platform / Ansible Tower / AWX
• Security Awareness
• Network Experience
• SSL Certificates

About your application:

We review every application received and will get in touch if your skills and experience match what we’re looking for. If you don’t hear back from us within 10 days, please don’t be too disappointed – we may keep your CV on our database for any future vacancies and we would encourage you to keep an eye on our career opportunities as there may be other suitable roles.

Why Escode?

Escode is a global leader in technology resilience and software escrow, helping organisations manage complex software supply chains through software verification and escrow solutions. As an independent business, we ensure business-critical software and source code are secure, accessible, and ready when it matters, reducing risk and strengthening resilience before issues arise.