Lead DevOps Engineer - AWS

Please note this role requires you to pass Security Check clearance. For further information, please see 'Selection process details'.

We’re hiring Lead DevOps Engineers (AWS) at DWP Digital!

We’re looking for outstanding candidates who want to contribute to demanding and exciting digital services for the UK Government. The products we build are the changing the face of public services with the potential to dramatically transform the future of millions of people.

We’re looking for driven and passionate people to be part of delivering digital services to people that need help during the difficult times of their lives.

You will act as a DevOps leader, building a DevOps culture along with line management responsibility of Senior DevOps Engineers. You will lead existing DevOps Engineers while increasing capability, standards and practices across the organisation.

As a Lead DevOps Engineer you will contribute to our community ensuring that DWP and our DevOps practices evolve in line with technology advances., Payments - DWP serves approx. 22m citizens paying circa £282bn annually. We have an ambitious transformation programme to make best use of emerging future technologies and leverage industry best practices. This Lead DevOps role will sit within the Payments Platform Team.

Digital Modernisation and Efficiency - Teams within Digital Modernisation and Efficiency (DME) manage multiple large scale systems providing a vast range of services to citizens. These include providing retirement planning support for 20 million working age citizens, enabling 13 million pension age customers to receive their correct entitlements on time and ensuring 5 million customers for Care and Attendance Allowance are supported through timely, accurate and accessible digital services that meet their needs. Underpinning these services is a large scale cloud operations platform using best in class technologies to provide best in class service. This Lead DevOps role will sit within the DME AWS Platform Team.

Data Enablement - The Data Enablement team, responsible for managing a variety of data products, including those related to welfare benefits, citizen journeys, and reference/meta-data services. These products are created by transforming raw data into curated, user-friendly data that can be easily understood and used by end users. The Data Enablement team also owns a data quality tool and a data analytics platform (SAS), which is currently undergoing a major migration from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud., As Lead DevOps Engineer, you will:

• Work across multiple teams as an engineering specialist defining and refining organisation engineering standards.
• Push a mindset and culture change within the organisation to foster engineering ownership of infrastructure development alongside software engineering activities.
• Create capability, through definition of training opportunities, pastoral care and practice alignment.
• Be responsible for ensuring our digital services are adhering to standards and best practice.
• Be responsible for recruitment within the DevOps community and working with senior leaders to ensure strategically the teams are setup to succeed.
• Responsible for mentoring and support of engineers and trainee DevOps engineers.

Please note: As part of the role, you may be required to travel regularly to the other digital hubs. The frequency of this will be discussed further should you be successful., Ensure that all examples provided in your statements are taken directly from your own experience and that you describe the examples in your own words. If you choose to use gen-AI to support your statements, you must follow the guidelines outlined in the Artificial intelligence and recruitment guide. The sift panel will use the information in your employment history, personal statement, and technical statement to assess your experience, skills and knowledge. An initial sift will be conducted using the technical statement. Candidates who pass the initial sift will be progressed to a full sift. If you do progress to a full sift, you will be provided with one combined overall assessment score for both your employment history and Personal Statement.

For Hints and Tips on completing your application visit Applying for jobs at DWP Digital.

Important Information

• You will be asked to complete your employment history. Any information that you would customarily share on a CV should therefore be entered onto the application form.
• Personal details that could be used to identify you including your name, contact details and address must be removed for your application to be considered.
• If your employment history, personal statement or technical statement contain any personal details your application will be withdrawn.

Stage 2: Interview

If you’re successful at the sift stage, you’ll be invited to a video interview via Microsoft Teams. During the interview, you’ll be assessed against the experience criteria listed under both the essential and technical skill.

You will be asked to do a 10 minute presentation on the following :

DWP is a complex business with many legacy applications which are hosted on-premise. DWP also has a cloud first strategy. This means there is a need to evaluate and move legacy applications to cloud-base infrastructure.

Present what your approach to migrating a legacy application would be. What considerations you would make and how you’d ensure a smooth transition.

Your presentation should include both technical and non-technical aspects which may include how the team and users transition with the change, stakeholder management, continued development and on-going support for AWS cloud-based applications.

Interviews will take place from beginning of March 2026. Interview dates to be confirmed.

Further Information

Find out more about Working for DWP

If high application volumes are received, the benchmark for candidates to proceed to the next stage may be raised. In line with our commitment to the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS), we aim to advance all candidates applying under the DCS who meet the minimum standard. However, we may only progress those candidates who best meet the required standards.

A reserve list may be held for a period of 6 months from which further appointments can be made.

All successful candidates and those placed on reserve will be posted in merit list order by location.

For these vacancies, we strongly recommend that applicants consult with an immigration specialist or qualified advisor to assess their eligibility for Visa Sponsorship before deciding to apply. Please note that while we consider sponsorship requests in accordance with current DWP guidance and Home Office policy, sponsorship cannot be guaranteed.

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.

Security Clearance Requirement

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.

For further information on National Security Vetting please visit the Demystifying Vetting website., * 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?, * Experience of leading and supporting Engineers in multi-disciplinary teams in an agile environment and sharing knowledge and good practice with the wider organisation.

• Significant experience of version control systems as well as building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines e.g. git with GitLab CI or Jenkins.
• Significant experience of Infrastructure-as-code and configuration of code for one or more cloud providers.
• Experience of containerisation and container orchestration.
• Experience of multiple scripting and/or programming languages (e.g. Bash, Python).

4. Technical statement (up to 250 words). The following statement is aligned to the required technical skill of Technical Breadth. This statement should be used to provide example(s) of how you meet the criterion below:

• Significant experience of the full life cycle of a cloud-based platforms and applications from designing, through deployment to supporting and patching in particular AWS., 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 .

Pulled from the full job description

• Pay rise
• Annual leave
• Employee discount
• Company pension
• Cycle to work scheme, Alongside your salary of £75,026, Department for Work and Pensions contributes £21,735 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 £75,026 to £92,522.

The maximum salary for the grade is £80,267, however a Digital Allowance of up to £12,255 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.

Existing Civil Servants who gain promotion will move to the bottom of the grade pay scale or receive a 10% increase in salary, whichever is greater.