Senior DevOps

Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you're seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it's really like to work at HMRC., As a Senior DevOps (Platform Engineer) within HMRC's Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS), you will be pivotal in delivering robust cloud platform services. Working in a product-centric development environment, you will bring extensive DevOps skills and Site Reliability Engineering awareness to build services and bring them into full production operation., As an experienced DevOps/platform engineer, you will act as a technical specialist and mentor to developers, adopting an agile approach to delivery where new services or improvements are delivered collaboratively and incrementally to realise business value at the earliest opportunity. Your development will be through a broad range of CI/CD technologies including GitLab, Ansible, Artifactory, and Jira., Automation & Infrastructure as Code

• Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform.
• Remove manual intervention through an automation-first mindset.

CI/CD with GitLab

• Design, implement, and maintain CI/CD pipelines in GitLab to automate deployments and configuration changes.
• Iterate on automated testing, security scanning, and compliance checks within pipelines.
• Collaborate across our teams on reusable GitLab CI templates and standardising build/release processes.
• Optimise pipeline performance and troubleshoot issues.

Security & Compliance

• Apply cloud security according to industry good practice
• Support audits and maintain alignment with compliance frameworks

Performance & Cost Optimisation

• Analyse value/cost/performance to optimise spend and capacity.

Collaboration & Leadership

• Mentor engineers and share best practices across Platform teams.
• Partner with platform operation teams to ensure smooth releases., When answering you will be required to provide a specific instance from your career which reflects the behaviour or technical skill
• Mentoring & Technical Leadership
• Critical Thinking & Technical Mindset

You will be advised to apply the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) technique when delivering examples. You would be encouraged to prepare demonstratable examples of your experience ahead of the interview to ensure meaningfulness and completeness.

Interviews will take place via video link. Sift and interview dates to be confirmed.

Eligibility

Please take extra care to tick the correct boxes in the eligibility sections of your application form. We understand mistakes sometimes happen but if you contact us later than two working days (Monday-Friday) before the vacancy closes, we will not be able to reopen your application for you. If you do make a mistake with your eligibility form, please contact us via: unitybusinessservicesrecruitmentresults@hmrc.gov.uk - Use the subject line to insert appropriate wording for example - 'Please re-open my application - [insert vacancy ref] & vacancy closing date [insert date]'.

To check that you are eligible to apply for this role, please review the eligibility information before submitting your application.

Reserve List

A reserve list may be held for up to 6 months from which further appointments may be made for the same or similar roles - if this applies to you, we'll let you know via your Civil Service Jobs account.

Merit List

After interview, a single merit list will be created, and you will only be considered for posts in locations you have expressed a preference for. Appointments will be made in strict merit order in line with the set number of roles in each location.

Criminal Record Check

Applications received from candidates with a criminal record are considered fairly in accordance with the DBS Code of Practice and the Recruitment of ex-offenders Policy.

Hybrid working at HMRC

HMRC is an office-based organisation, and colleagues are expected to spend 60% of their working time in the office. Our offices provide opportunity for interaction, collaboration which aids learning and development and a sense of community. Where the role allows it, and where the home environment is suitable, colleagues can work from home for up to 2 days a week, averaged over a calendar month (or a proportionate amount of time for colleagues who work less than full time).

Reasonable Adjustments

We want to make sure no one is put at a disadvantage during our recruitment process. To assist you with this, we will reduce or remove any barriers where possible and provide additional support where appropriate., HMRC has a presence in every region of the UK. For more information on where you might be working, review this information on our locations.

The Civil Service values honesty and integrity and expects all candidates to abide by these principles. The evidence you provide in your application must relate to your own experiences.

Any instances of plagiarism or other forms of cheating will be investigated and, if proven, the relevant application(s) will be withdrawn from the process.

Recording of interviews is prohibited unless explicit agreement is sought in line with the UK General Data Protection Regulations.

Questions relating to an individual application must be emailed as detailed later in this advert.

Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant's details held on the IFD will be refused employment.

A candidate is not eligible to apply for a role within the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5 year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government.

New entrants will join on the minimum of the pay band.

Please note that, if you are applying for roles on a part-time basis, the salary agreed will be pro-rata, reflective of the working hours agreed within your contract.

If you experience accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section.

For more Information for people applying for, or thinking of applying for, roles at HM Revenue and Customs, please see link: Working for HMRC: information for applicants - GOV.UK. Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check .

See our vetting charter . People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks., * UK nationals

• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service, Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission's Recruitment Principles. You have the right to complain if you feel there has been a breach of the Recruitment Principles. In the first instance, you should raise the matter directly via ubsrecruitmentcomplaints@hmrc.gov.uk. Please note that we do not accept complaints or appeals regarding scoring of outcomes of campaigns, unless candidates can provide clear evidence that the campaign did not follow the Recruitment Principles. If you are not satisfied with the response, you may bring your complaint to the Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their website.

Do you have experience in Terraform?, Do you thrive on keeping critical platforms running smoothly?

Are you passionate about cloud platform operations, security, and automation?

Do you have experience in addressing risks, incidents and service quality across technical teams?

Do you want to play a key role in delivering reliable, secure, and efficient platforms that provide services for millions of citizens?

We are seeking experienced engineers to work within a product team, analysing, designing, developing, automating and delivering either our Core Cloud Platforms or Cloud Shared Services in HMRC's Cloud Environment. You will naturally be a self-starter, adept at working individually or as part of a small team, able to convey technical concepts to a variety of stakeholders., * Experience in one or many of the following areas:

• Building AWS platforms for enterprise size organisations
• Building Azure platforms for enterprise size organisations
• Building CI/CD tooling as a service including, Gitlab, Artifactory, Jira, Confluence
• Building Security and Secrets Management tooling including, Hashicorp Vault, OpsView
• Building Container platforms using AKS, EKS, Kubernetes
• Building out Machine Images delivery functions for Linux and Windows images, as well as building out DNS solutions for our cloud estate

• Experience in building out Infrastructure as Code (Terraform preferred)
• Scripting skills (e.g. Python, Go, or Bash)

Desirable Criteria

• Awareness of FinOps and cloud cost management.
• Cloud related certifications
• Familiarity with the principles behind ITIL service operations
• Contributing to training and development pathways for junior engineers

Behaviours

Mentoring & Technical Leadership

The ideal candidate will demonstrate a proactive approach to mentoring and supporting junior team members, fostering a culture of continuous learning and growth. They will actively contribute to the technical leadership of the team by sharing knowledge, offering constructive feedback, and guiding others through complex problem-solving. Their ability to lead by example, communicate clearly, and encourage collaboration will be key to building a resilient and high-performing engineering culture.

Critical Thinking & Technical Mindset

We're looking for someone who brings a strong critical thinking mindset to their technical work-someone who doesn't just follow patterns, but questions assumptions, evaluates options, and makes informed decisions. The successful candidate will approach challenges with curiosity and analytical rigour, balancing innovation with pragmatism. They will be comfortable navigating ambiguity, identifying root causes, and proposing solutions that are both technically sound and aligned with strategic goals., Customer facing roles in HMRC require the ability to converse at ease with members of the public and provide advice in accurate spoken English and/or Welsh where required. Where this is an essential requirement, this will be tested as part of the selection process.

£58,541 - £64,624 You may also be eligible for Higher Starting Pay (HSP). Depending on your skill level and capability, you may be able to obtain a starting salary above bottom of the pay band. A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97% GBP, Alongside your salary of £58,541, HM Revenue and Customs contributes £16,959 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments. We welcome applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, considering our operational and customer service needs.

We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.

• Pension - We make contributions to our colleagues' Alpha pension equal to at least 28.97% of their salary.
• Family friendly policies.
• Personal support.
• Coaching and development.

To find out more about HMRC benefits and find out what it's really like to work for HMRC hear from our insiders or visit Thinking of joining the Civil Service

Within HMRC's Chief Digital & Information Group (CDIO), specifically in the Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS) team we are redefining our offerings and growing the team of outstanding people to improve the Cloud Centre of Excellence. We are already a diverse team of 90+ technologists, creating a dynamic and inclusive working environment whose skills cover architecture, platform development, service design, platform operations and governance.