Senior Site Reliability Engineer

This is a fantastic opportunity to join DWP and to be part of the one the biggest digital transformations in Europe, implementing leading edge technologies with the user at the centre of everything we do - we create innovative digital solutions that make a difference to the lives of our 22 million users.

We are looking for Senior Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) to join one of our SRE teams at the heart of Digital Transformation.

As a Senior Site Reliability Engineer, you will drive adoption of SRE best practice across our cloud estate.

By utilising both your soft skills and technical experience, you will work with teams to ensure our standards and governance is met by onboarding our services into the cloud, through a dedicated assessment stage gate process. In turn, ensuring our citizen facing applications satisfy all the required operational and security needs for running in production., As a Senior Site Reliability Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring the reliability and performance of our applications and infrastructure.

The SRE team will put you in the position to work with application teams across the department on developing reliable and secure solutions to provide to citizens across the UK.

You will lead by example, providing technical direction and supporting other SREs within your team.

You will work with development teams from the design phase to help them use good practice and department standards when building their application infrastructure.

Additionally, responsibilities of the role will include:

• Design and develop the techniques for improving application reliability, run books, knowledge transfer across teams, and ongoing SRE strategy within your Functional and Professional Communities.
• Work collaboratively with development teams and provide guidance around best practice and ensure monitoring of applications is enabled.
• Push a mindset change within the organisation to foster engineering ownership, SRE best practice and the importance of the integrity and maintenance of the Live Service.
• Manage the error budget agreed with the product owner for the application and ensure that work is balanced in alignment with it.
• Act as the focal point for the investigation and resolution of major or complex incidents for the service, ensuring people with the right skills and expertise are proactively available to respond effectively.
• Assess the impact of change requests in consultation with stakeholders, providing technical expertise and authorising the implementation of subsequent changes.
• Coach and mentor application development and operations engineers in the practice and techniques of SRE.
• Conduct reviews for all high priority and major incidents ensuring they are done quickly and published.
• Routinely seek views and capture ideas from stakeholders and team members for improvements and encourage collaboration and innovation.
• Provide on-call support to help restore services, through dedicated run books or technical experience.
• Help to reduce toil and increase automation; by developing reliability to ensure we have a reduction of the time to live, and cost spend on repetitive tasks., When giving details in your employment history and personal statement you should highlight your experience in line with essential criteria below, 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. 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

Do you have experience in Scripting?, * Lead Criterion: Automation Expertise: Proven experience in scripting to automate processes, eliminating manual tasks, and implementing infrastructure and configuration as code.

• CI/CD Pipeline Development: Demonstrated ability to build and enhance CI/CD pipelines for efficient and reliable software delivery.
• Development: Demonstrable experience of developing cloud based and supporting cloud-based applications in AWS & Azure.
• Incident Resolution: Strong experience in resolving complex technical incidents, ensuring minimal downtime and swift recovery.
• Reliability Engineering: Expertise in reliability engineering, including capacity and performance management through effective monitoring, logging, and alerting.
• Leadership: Demonstrated ability to engage with stakeholders at all levels, providing valuable feedback and support, while leading teams effectively, mentoring junior engineers, and driving improvements in working practices., You must meet the security requirements before you can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check.

Applicants for this post must have lived in the UK for 5 years or more during their lifetime for DWP to accept National Security Vetting applications at the Security Check (SC) level. Requests to apply for SC will always be supported where people have lived in the UK for the last 5 years but will be subject to a pre-assessment if they have lived outside the UK during this period.

Pulled from the full job description

• Annual leave
• Employee discount
• Company pension
• Cycle to work scheme, Alongside your salary of £57,946, Department for Work and Pensions contributes £16,786 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

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.

Hybrid Working

This 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.

If a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for the role and for you, you will normally be required to spend a minimum of 60% of your contracted working hours from your DWP office.

If you have a disability, caring responsibilities, or other circumstances that may affect your ability to meet the minimum office attendance requirement, please discuss this with us using the contact details in this advert.

Salary Information

Pay for this role is from £57,946 to £78,517.

The maximum salary for the grade is £68,205, however a Digital Allowance of up to £10,312 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 will maintain their current salary.