Senior DevOps Engineer - Cabinet Office - G7

Location

We are offering location options for this role as below:

Existing CO staff can work in their original contractual work location.

Existing Civil Servants working in all other departments can work in Bristol, Glasgow, London, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Norwich or York only.

External candidates can work in Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Norwich or York only.

About the job Job summary

The Senior DevOps Engineer role is part of the Technical Live Services team within Cabinet Office Digital. Help shape the future of UK Government Digital Services as a Senior DevOps Engineer, pushing the boundaries of technology to make a tangible difference to the lives of millions.

The Cabinet Office sits at the heart of the UK Government, driving a ground-breaking digital transformation to set a new global benchmark for public services. Over the next three years, our mission is to deliver world-class digital offerings, making public services digital by default, simpler, clearer, and faster to use.

As a Senior DevOps Engineer in CO Digital, you will be responsible for designing, developing, and implementing high-quality, customised digital solutions that support critical business functions and deliver on key project objectives. You will work closely with multidisciplinary teams, technical architects, and diverse stakeholders to gather requirements, integrate complex systems, and ensure the resilience, security, and scalability of our infrastructure.

In this role, you will help the government manage and reduce its reliance on legacy technology while establishing robust continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. You will champion modern agile methods, advocate for best practices in software development, and foster an open, collaborative environment. Working alongside junior engineers and senior leaders, you will mentor colleagues, build team capabilities, and drive continuous improvement across our digital ecosystem.

We value both breadth and depth of technical capability. Above all, you will be motivated by truly important work that puts users first, possessing a proactive approach to problem-solving and a passion for building robust, user-centric public
services.

Our business support hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and we ask that you are flexible with your shifts to cover these hours.

Job description

This vacancy is open for 2 Grade 7 Senior DevOps Engineers.

As a Senior DevOps Engineer, your core responsibilities will include:

• Supporting, operating, and maintaining software in live production environments, utilising modern tools to identify, troubleshoot, and resolve faults
• Designing, implementing, and maintaining development and deployment pipelines (CI/CD) for new, existing, and previously unsupported services
• Writing clean, secure, and well-tested code-including comprehensive commentary and supporting documentation
• Adhering to and promoting internal software development standards, processes, and procedures across multidisciplinary teams
• Providing integrated, user-focused solutions that align strategically across multiple platforms and meet business needs
• Packaging and deploying software updates with precision, adhering to change management procedures (occasional deployment activities may fall outside core office hours)
• Collaborating effectively across teams and technical disciplines to achieve high-quality project outcomes
• Finding ways to continuously improve system robustness, resilience, capacity, and overall stability
• Transferring skills and knowledge by mentoring, guiding, and developing the capability of junior engineers and peers
• Travelling between sites for meetings, events, and collaborative working sessions as required

Person specification

Essential criteria

To be successful in this role, you must be able to demonstrate:

• Proven working knowledge of cloud platforms (specifically AWS) and cloud service integration.
• Strong experience developing related technical stories using modern tools, techniques, and practices such as TDD, CI/CD, and DevOps.
• A holistic understanding of whole-system architecture and experience operating, maintaining, and enhancing the production services you build.
• Strong proficiency in main programming languages, specifically Python and JavaScript, alongside web frameworks (e.g., Django, Node/Next.js).
• Experience working with at least one relational database management system (RDBMS), such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, or Oracle.
• Ability to quickly research, evaluate, and adopt new programming tools, frameworks, and techniques.
• Strong communication skills with a proven ability to bridge understanding between technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Solid understanding of common security vulnerabilities, threat mitigation, and application/server hardening best practices.
• Practical familiarity implementing monitoring, logging, alerting, and production support services.
• Experience working within enterprise IT environments and following change management processes.

Desirable criteria

It is desirable that you also have:

• Practical experience with mainstream content management systems (such as Wagtail or WordPress) and custom content workflow integrations.
• Understanding and practical experience with incident management techniques, root cause analysis, and response processes.
• Experience working within high-security environments using tools and frameworks that support secure coding practices.

Technical Skills:

Candidates will be evaluated against the following technical domains aligned with the Government Digital and Data Capability Framework:

• Infrastructure as Code & Automation: Proficient with Terraform, CloudFormation, and process automation tools.
• CI/CD & Source Control: Skilled in GitHub Actions, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, CodeBuild (or similar tools), branch management policies, and release workflows.
• Cloud Architecture & AWS Ecosystem: Expertise in core AWS services, including VPC, IAM, Security Groups, NACLs, Load Balancing, Autoscaling, Lambda (Serverless), OpenSearch, and LightSail.
• Databases & Runtimes: Experience with PostgreSQL, Aurora, MySQL, and runtimes including Python (Django) and JavaScript (NodeJS).
• Monitoring, Logging & Observability: Hands-on experience with CloudWatch, Splunk, availability tooling, and health check configurations.
• Security, Caching & Content Delivery: Knowledge of WAF, AWS Shield, CloudFront CDN, GuardDuty, Memcached, and vulnerability remediation strategies.
  
• Technical Authoring & Practices: Experienced in creating runbooks, technical manuals, threat models, and working within Agile/Kanban delivery frameworks.