Principal Infrastructure Engineer

Home Office Government Digital and Data designs, builds and develops services for the rest of the department and for government. Every year our systems support up to 3 million visa applications, checks on 100 million border crossings, up to 8 million passport applications and deliver 140 million police checks on people, vehicles, and property.

Networks and Infrastructure (N&I) within the Home Office are responsible for delivering and maintaining the core infrastructure for all the Home Office. This post sits within the existing Core Infrastructure team.

The team handles a diverse range of systems, concepts, and technologies. This includes Windows and Linux servers, core Windows technologies such as Active Directory, DNS, DHCP and Certificate Authority. They also manage server and service monitoring, Infrastructure as Code, immutable infrastructure, automation and serverless compute as well as public cloud provided services across several major public cloud vendors. The team collaborates extensively with other traditional infrastructure teams for connectivity and services as well as application teams to move legacy workloads to the cloud.

This post offers the opportunity for skilled, ambitious applicants to work with a range of these technologies to develop their skills and career in Infrastructure Engineering within a large enterprise environment.

Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. Where this is the case, employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in the office. Applicants can raise any queries to the email address at the bottom of the advert.

Watch this short video to hear from members of Home Office Digital talking about the projects they work on and their experience of working here: Working for Home Office Digital., A Principal Infrastructure Engineer is a technical leader, responsible for developing strategic and tactical engineering roadmaps for technologies and services, ensuring they are future proofed and maximise value of technology investments. You define engineering best practice within the Home Office and inspire others to adopt them.

You may be responsible for the operational relationships with suppliers, ensuring services and products are delivered and aligned to industry best practice, regulatory and contractual requirements.

Leading infrastructure teams, you oversee the building, managing, supporting, and maintaining solutions according to departmental policy and strategy. You will work with technical architects, ensuring continuous improvement to the service catalogue, future designs, and service operability. You will lead on overall management activities such as workforce planning, budgeting, technology roadmaps, projects, and tasks.

Like many organisations we need to maintain our services 24/7, therefore, on occasions there may be a requirement to work out of hours, for which you will be paid an additional allowance., Your main day to day responsibilities will be:

• Leading teams and departments in the design, implementation, transition, administration and support of infrastructure solutions and services.
• Providing operational feedback to technical architects to ensure their designs are meeting the needs of the infrastructure engineers.
• Providing support to make sure that solutions and services are designed with security controls embedded, specifically engineered as mitigation against security threats.
• Ensuring that the right actions are taken to investigate, resolve and anticipate problems, coordinating teams to investigate problems, implement solutions and establish preventative measures.
• Establishing standards and procedures across a service lifecycle including the development lifecycle and ensure that engineers adhere to this. Managing resources to ensure that the systems integration function works effectively.
• Defining and helping shape engineering best practices and standards.
• Apply and continually develop strong technical expertise within computer science or a related computing field, keeping your knowledge current through ongoing professional development.

Working Pattern

This role is available on a full-time basis with the option of compressed hours working. This role is also suitable for part-time working hours, with a minimum requirement to work 3 days per week due to business requirements., The allowance values are set by the Home Office, subject to remaining in a qualifying role. This allowance is non-contractual, subject to an annual review and could be withdrawn at any time.

For both new entrants and existing civil servants, the total compensation offer is a combination of base salary and, if applicable, a capability-based allowance. The pay ranges for this role are National: £76,117 - £83,729 and London: £80,237 - £88,261. New entrants to the Civil Service will start on the pay range minimum. For existing civil servants, our policies on level transfer and promotion will apply.

Reasonable Adjustments

If a person with disabilities is at a substantial disadvantage compared to a non-disabled person, we have a duty to make reasonable changes to our processes.

If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should:

• Contact Government Recruitment Service via HOrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.
• Complete the “Assistance Required” section in the “Additional Requirements” page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you are deaf, a language service professional.

Criminal Record Check

In order to process applications without delay, we will be sending a Criminal Record Check to Disclosure and Barring Service on your behalf.

However, we recognise in exceptional circumstances some candidates will want to send their completed forms direct. If you will be doing this, please advise Government Recruitment Service of your intention by emailing Pre-EmploymentChecks.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk stating the job reference number in the subject heading.

If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the ‘Contact point for applicants’ section.

Feedback 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 System design?, * The key engineering principles and standards, and the ability to inspire others to follow these.

• Managing and delivering complex technologies within time, cost and quality targets.
• Ensuring all solutions are robust, resilient and appropriately implemented, secured, tested and documented.
• Building strong partnerships with diverse teams across multiple locations and technologies.
• Advising on future technology changes and innovations and define best practice for network improvements and information security.
• Strong hands-on technical knowledge of one or more of the following: identity and access management, cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS or Azure), public cloud networking.

SFIA capability framework

Skills for the Information Age (SFIA) version 8 is the technical framework that sets the standard capability and development of all levels in the Home Office. This is a link to the capability framework: All skills A - Z English (sfia-online.org).

We use set SFIA technical skills to form our interview questions and we will assess you against these technical skills during the selection process.

The essential skills listed above are reflective of the Home Office Government Digital and Data Profession Career Framework (based on the industry standard SFIA framework). Use the SFIA Levels of responsibility to understand what would be expected for each technical skills listed below.

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Systems design (DESN) - Level 4
• Testing (TEST) - Level 4
• Systems installation and removal (HSIN) – Level 4
• IT infrastructure (ITOP) – Level 5
• Incident management (USUP) - Level 4
• Organisational facilitation (OFCL) - Level 5, For meaningful security checks to be carried out, individuals need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time. Learn more on our website. Security Checks - Home Office Careers.

Please note that this role requires Security Check (SC) clearance, which would normally need 5 years’ UK residency in the past 5 years.

Candidates must also hold or be prepared to undergo NPPV3 clearance.

However, in exceptional circumstances security clearance applications for candidates who have been present in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years may be considered. Failure to meet this residency requirement will result in your security clearance application being rejected., We are unable to sponsor any individuals via Skilled Worker Sponsorship / Tier 2 (General) work visas as we do not hold a UK Visa & Immigration (UKVI) Skilled Worker License.

Pulled from the full job description

• Annual leave
• Company pension, £76,117 New entrants to the Civil Service will start their role on the salary band minimum £76,117 for National roles or £80,237 for London roles.

You may be eligible for an additional non-pensionable allowance, pending a Capability and Skills Assessment, with a value of up to £19,483. A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97% GBP, Alongside your salary of £76,117, Home Office contributes £22,051 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Why work for us...

Find out more information at: Benefits - Home Office Careers, but some of the primary ones are:

• A Civil Service Pension with employer contribution rates of at least 28.97%.
• In-year reward scheme for one-off or sustained exceptional personal or team achievements.
• 25 days annual leave on appointment, rising with service.
• 8 days of public holidays, plus 1 additional privilege day.
• 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 employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in an office.