Senior AWS DevOps Engineer

About the job

• Benefits
• Things you need to know
• Apply and further information

Location

This role may be located in one of the following locations; Birmingham, Blackpool, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle Upon Tyne or Sheffield.

Please find further information on the Corporate hub locations here.

Please note that for candidates requesting to work in Newcastle, the role will initially be based at Benton Park View. It will then move to 1 Pilgrim Place in Newcastle city centre by the end of 2027.

For candidates requesting to work in Sheffield King’s Court, please note these roles will initially be based at King’s Court and then move to 1 West Bar by early 2028

About the job

Job summary

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

Are you an experienced AWS DevOps Engineer looking for a role where your work has real national impact?

Do you want to help shape the future of digital public services used by millions of people across the UK?

Are you ready to lead, inspire and develop DevOps capability within a growing engineering community?

If so, we'd love to invite you to one of our face-to-face assessment days in Leeds.

DWP Digital is looking for skilled Senior AWS DevOps Engineers to join our organisation and help deliver some of the UK's most important digital services. You'll work on large-scale, business-critical platforms that support millions of citizens, using modern cloud technologies and DevOps practices to drive continuous improvement and service excellence.

The services we design, and deliver are transforming how people interact with government, providing reliable, accessible and efficient digital experiences that make a real difference to people's lives.

Successful candidates will join one of the following teams:

Health and Disability Digital Policy Service

Delivering digital services that support citizens accessing health and disability-related support.

Digital Channels

Building and supporting the digital communication channels that connect citizens with DWP services.

Bereavement and Care Live Support

Supporting digital services that help citizens access essential support during significant life events and caring responsibilities.

Core Digital Services, Shared Citizen Information Services

Providing the shared platforms and citizen information services that underpin DWP's digital ecosystem.

Job description

As a Senior AWS DevOps Engineer, you'll play a key role in delivering and evolving the cloud platforms, tools and engineering practices that support DWP's digital services.

You'll use modern tooling to build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and DevOps toolchains, placing automation at the centre of your approach. Working within AWS cloud environments, you'll design and implement solutions that are highly available, resilient, scalable, extensible and maintainable.

You'll collaborate closely with product-focused teams across the organisation to understand requirements, evaluate tools and technologies, provision environments, implement solutions and support operational activities. Through this work, you'll help teams deliver services efficiently while maintaining a strong focus on reliability and long-term sustainability.

As a senior member of the DevOps community, you'll promote a culture of engineering ownership and reinforce the importance of service integrity, resilience and ongoing maintenance. You'll also provide leadership and line management to DevOps Engineers, supporting their development and helping to strengthen capability, standards and best practices across the organisation.

You'll contribute to the wider DevOps community, sharing knowledge and helping ensure our tools, practices and approaches continue to evolve alongside advances in technology.

Key Responsibilities

• Build, maintain and enhance CI/CD pipelines and DevOps toolchains, with automation at the heart of delivery.
• Design and implement highly available, resilient, scalable, extensible and maintainable solutions within AWS cloud environments.
• Promote engineering ownership and support best practices that improve service integrity and long-term maintainability.
• Work with product-focused teams to gather requirements, evaluate tools and technologies, provision environments and implement solutions.
• Support operational activities and contribute to the ongoing reliability and performance of services.
• Lead, mentor and line manage DevOps Engineers, helping to develop capability across teams.
• Strengthen DevOps standards, practices and ways of working across the organisation.
• Contribute to the wider DevOps community and support the continuous evolution of engineering approaches and tooling.

Person specification

See selection process for further details.

If you would like to learn more about the role, please contact Richard.Hanley@dwp.gov.uk

Behaviours

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

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Leadership

Technical skills

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

• Technical Breadth

Benefits

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 (opens in a new window).

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 £80,664.

The maximum salary for the grade is £68,205, however a Digital Allowance of up to £12,459 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 substantive salary.

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

Any temporary allowances that you are currently in receipt of will not form part of the calculation to determine your pay. Any allowances that are in payment will cease when you move into your new role.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window) , and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

Stage 1: Application

Your application will consist of four parts:

1. A Personal Details application form.

2. Employment history - this should contain your work experience and any skills, qualifications and accomplishments relevant to the jobs you have completed.

3. Personal statement - up to 1000 words. This statement should be used to provide examples of how you meet the essential criteria below:

• Demonstrable knowledge of writing and maintaining Infrastructure, and Configuration as Code.
• Demonstrable experience of using Unix/Linux in a support and/or development environment including scripting languages.
• Demonstrable experience of working in a DevOps environment – Continuous Integration & Deployment, Delivery methods and techniques, including agile scrum experience.
• Demonstrable knowledge of implementing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience of supporting, guiding, and developing Engineers across multi-disciplinary teams in an agile environment.

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 one or more examples of how you meet the criterion below:

• Demonstrable experience of developing and supporting AWS cloud-based applications.

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: Coding Test

If you are successful at the sift stage, we will send you a