Development Operations (DevOps) Engineer - Ministry of Defence - SEO in Manchester

Location: Norcross - Tomlinson House, FY5 3WP, Abbey Wood North, Stoke Gifford, Bristol, South West, BS34 8QW, Kentigern House, Glasgow, G2 3EX.

About The Job

Are you a dedicated person who is passionate about making a difference? Would you like to work for the Ministry of Defence? Defence Business Services (DBS) is one of the largest shared service organisations in Europe that provides a wide range of corporate services, to over 1.2 million end users, including serving and past military and families, as well as MoD civil servants and industry. DBS delivers large scale administration and smaller specialist services to enable the wider MOD to focus on its core aims, maintaining the UK’s Defence and Security. Services include Human Resources, Pay, Veterans, Finance and Procurement.

Our Vision - To support UK defence customers with outstanding service every time. Our Mission – Together we will proudly support Defence, continuously improving and delivering flexible, timely, sustainable and value for money services that underpin the whole force and enhance operational capability.

DBS is committed to creating a great place to work for all our colleagues. We are building an inclusive culture and respectful environment that reflects the diversity of society. We want to maximise the potential of everyone who chooses to work for us through opportunities to develop your skills and experience. We also offer a range of flexible working patterns and support to make a fulfilling career accessible to you and offer a Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%. Where your role permits, we support a blended working approach alternatively known as hybrid working. Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. This is a non-contractual arrangement where all office-based employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in office, subject to capacity and any required workplace adjustments. Requirements to attend other locations for official business, or work in another MOD office, will also count towards this level of attendance. Applicants can request further information regarding how this may work in their team from the Vacancy Holder.

DBS has recently undertaken a review of its operational locations in the North West, and have consolidated all activities in Norcross, Blackpool. A further move, to the new Government Hub at Talbot Gateway in Blackpool, is scheduled to take place in 2027. Come and join the DBS community today!

Job Description

DBS DIT provides digital capability that supports corporate services across the Ministry of Defence, including Finance, Commercial, Payroll and Human Resources for Military Personnel, Civilian Personnel and Veterans. Our digital solutions comprise enterprise resource planning systems, performance management, analytics, automation, low code applications and public facing services through Gov.uk.

As a Senior DevOps Engineer, you will be at the heart of managing and optimising our development processes. Your responsibilities will include overseeing tools and testing environments, managing central code control, maintaining development standards, and writing software that automates systems. You will design secure solutions and deliver complex projects using modern development standards. Your role will also involve troubleshooting and resolving complex service faults and designing efficient systems with medium levels of risk and complexity. You will actively collaborate with user researchers to champion user-focused design, as well as with technical and solutions architects and software developers. In addition, you will underpin the development of both internal user services and public-facing services. You will deploy and manage applications on OpenShift and third-party PaaS solutions and manage CI/CD pipelines.

The ideal candidate will demonstrate strong leadership, effective communication, decision-making skills, and a commitment to continuous improvement and development.

Responsibilities

• Transform technical requirements into an effective DevOps toolchain to enable product delivery.
• Ensure that deployment strategies for products are repeatable, scalable and highly available.
• Have deep technical knowledge, providing support to delivery teams and solving complex problems.
• Manage service components and optimise development processes to ensure they meet business needs and performance indicators.
• Design secure solutions and services with controls specifically engineered to mitigate security threats.
• Use modern development standards to design, code, test, and document programs or scripts of medium-to-high complexity.
• Identify, locate, and fix complex service faults while advising others on different methodologies and types of service support.
• Design systems with medium levels of risk and complexity, ensuring the selection of appropriate technology and efficient resource use.
• Collaborate with user researchers to champion user research, prioritise and define approaches to understand the user story, and offer recommendations on the best tools and methods to use.
• Deploy, manage, and scale applications on OpenShift and third-party Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions, while setting up and managing continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines.
• Provide coaching and mentoring to more junior colleagues.

You will hold a recognized technical certification appropriate to the role or be prepared to obtain this while in post.

You Will Need The Following Skills For This Role

• Availability and Capacity Management (Senior DevOps Engineer).
• Development process optimisation (Senior DevOps Engineer).
• Information Security.
• Modern Development Standards.
• Programming and Build (Software Engineering).
• Prototyping.
• Service Support.
• Systems Design.
• Systems Integration.
• User focus.

You will hold a recognized technical certification appropriate to the role or be prepared to obtain this while in post.

Desirable Experience

• Experience with OpenShift.
• Proficiency with Prometheus and Terraform.
• Containerization and Kubernetes Experience.
• Web Development Skills.
• Experience with Platform as a Service (PaaS).
• Experience in CI/CD.
• Security Practices.