Senior DevOps Engineer

Job summary

The Senior DevOps Engineer role is part of the Technical Live Services team within Cabinet Office Digital. Help shape the future of UK Government Digital Services as a Senior DevOps Engineer, pushing the boundaries of technology to make a tangible difference to the lives of millions.

The Cabinet Office sits at the heart of the UK Government, driving a ground-breaking digital transformation to set a new global benchmark for public services. Over the next three years, our mission is to deliver world-class digital offerings, making public services digital by default, simpler, clearer, and faster to use.

As a Senior DevOps Engineer in CO Digital, you will be responsible for designing, developing, and implementing high-quality, customised digital solutions that support critical business functions and deliver on key project objectives. You will work closely with multidisciplinary teams, technical architects, and diverse stakeholders to gather requirements, integrate complex systems, and ensure the resilience, security, and scalability of our infrastructure.

In this role, you will help the government manage and reduce its reliance on legacy technology while establishing robust continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. You will champion modern agile methods, advocate for best practices in software development, and foster an open, collaborative environment. Working alongside junior engineers and senior leaders, you will mentor colleagues, build team capabilities, and drive continuous improvement across our digital ecosystem.

We value both breadth and depth of technical capability. Above all, you will be motivated by truly important work that puts users first, possessing a proactive approach to problem-solving and a passion for building robust, user-centric public

services.

Our business support hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and we ask that you are flexible with your shifts to cover these hours.

Job description

This vacancy is open for 2 Grade 7 Senior DevOps Engineers.

As a Senior DevOps Engineer, your core responsibilities will include:

• Supporting, operating, and maintaining software in live production environments, utilising modern tools to identify, troubleshoot, and resolve faults
• Designing, implementing, and maintaining development and deployment pipelines (CI/CD) for new, existing, and previously unsupported services
• Writing clean, secure, and well-tested code—including comprehensive commentary and supporting documentation
• Adhering to and promoting internal software development standards, processes, and procedures across multidisciplinary teams
• Providing integrated, user-focused solutions that align strategically across multiple platforms and meet business needs
• Packaging and deploying software updates with precision, adhering to change management procedures (occasional deployment activities may fall outside core office hours)
• Collaborating effectively across teams and technical disciplines to achieve high-quality project outcomes
• Finding ways to continuously improve system robustness, resilience, capacity, and overall stability.
• Transferring skills and knowledge by mentoring, guiding, and developing the capability of junior engineers and peers
• Travelling between sites for meetings, events, and collaborative working sessions as required

Person specification

Essential criteria

To be successful in this role, you must be able to demonstrate:

• Proven working knowledge of cloud platforms (specifically AWS) and cloud service integration.
• Strong experience developing related technical stories using modern tools, techniques, and practices such as TDD, CI/CD, and DevOps.
• A holistic understanding of whole-system architecture and experience operating, maintaining, and enhancing the production services you build.
• Strong proficiency in main programming languages, specifically Python and JavaScript, alongside web frameworks (e.g., Django, Node/Next.js).
• Experience working with at least one relational database management system (RDBMS), such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, or Oracle.
• Ability to quickly research, evaluate, and adopt new programming tools, frameworks, and techniques.
• Strong communication skills with a proven ability to bridge understanding between technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Solid understanding of common security vulnerabilities, threat mitigation, and application/server hardening best practices.
• Practical familiarity implementing monitoring, logging, alerting, and production support services.
• Experience working within enterprise IT environments and following change management processes.

Desirable criteria

It is desirable that you also have:

• Practical experience with mainstream content management systems (such as Wagtail or WordPress) and custom content workflow integrations.
• Understanding and practical experience with incident management techniques, root cause analysis, and response processes.
• Experience working within high-security environments using tools and frameworks that support secure coding practices.

Technical Skills:

Candidates will be evaluated against the following technical domains aligned with the Government Digital and Data Capability Framework:

• Infrastructure as Code & Automation : Proficient with Terraform, CloudFormation, and process automation tools.
• CI/CD & Source Control : Skilled in GitHub Actions, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, CodeBuild (or similar tools), branch management policies, and release workflows.
• Cloud Architecture & AWS Ecosystem : Expertise in core AWS services, including VPC, IAM, Security Groups, NACLs, Load Balancing, Autoscaling, Lambda (Serverless), OpenSearch, and LightSail.
• Databases & Runtimes : Experience with PostgreSQL, Aurora, MySQL, and runtimes including Python (Django) and JavaScript (NodeJS).
• Monitoring, Logging & Observability : Hands-on experience with CloudWatch, Splunk, availability tooling, and health check configurations.
• Security, Caching & Content Delivery : Knowledge of WAF, AWS Shield, CloudFront CDN, GuardDuty, Memcached, and vulnerability remediation strategies.
• Technical Authoring & Practices : Experienced in creating runbooks, technical manuals, threat models, and working within Agile/Kanban delivery frameworks.

Additional information:

Cabinet Office policy is that a minimum 60% of your working time should be spent at your principal workplace. For some roles, due to their nature and the business need, this may be up to 100%. Requirements to attend other locations for official business will also count towards this level of attendance.

Behaviours

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

• Delivering at Pace
• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing

Technical skills

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

• Programming and Build
• System Integration
• Service Support
• Information Security
• Systems Design

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £59,207, Cabinet Office contributes

£17,152 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).

• Learning and development tailored to your role.
• An environment with flexible working options.
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity.
• A Civil Service Pension which provides an attractive pension, benefits for dependants and employer contributions of 28.97%.
• A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by one day per year up to a maximum of 30.

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, Strengths, Experience and Technical skills.

After submission of the first stage of your application you will be invited to complete a Civil Service Numerical Test. If you successfully pass the test, you will be invited to complete the final stage of the application.

Please complete the online tests as soon as possible (within 24-48 hours is recommended), the closing date for the tests is 23:55 on 30th September 2026 . If you fail to complete the online test before the deadline your application will be withdrawn. Guidance for the test will be available when you are invited to take the test. The tests are administered online and accessed via the CS Jobs website.

You will be directed to the Talogy - True Talent – Scheduled Maintenance Window Webpage for online tests during an outage.

Our online test supplier will be performing scheduled maintenance between 4 p.m. and midnight 27th September 2026. You will be unable to access tests during this period.

If you are in the middle of a test when the maintenance begins, your progress will be paused. You will be able to resume your test from where you left off via your application centre once the downtime has ended. Please note that you will not be able to launch any new tests while the system is offline.

Application process

As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a CV, personal statement and behaviour statements:

• A CV: Job History and Qualification details
• A statement of suitability of no more than 1000 words. Please use your statement of suitability (in no more than 1000 words) to explain how you consider your experience; professional skills and qualities provide evidence of your suitability for the role with reference to the essential experience criteria in the person specification section of the job advert. Please include how long you have been using these skills and experience.
• Behaviour examples covering the following areas; • Delivering at Pace
• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and influencing

Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

Should a large number of applications be received, an initial sift may be undertaken using the lead Behaviour "Delivering at Pace". Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to assessment/interview.

Selection process

Interview process

During the interview, you will be assessed on the following technical skills as well as Strengths based questions:

• Programming and Build
• System Integration
• Service Support
• Information Security
• Systems Design

• Expected timeline (subject to change)
• Expected sift date – week commencing 5th October 2026
• Expected interview date/s – week commencing 19th October 2026

Interview location - Your interview will either be conducted face to face or by video. You will be notified of the location if you are selected for interview.

Reasonable adjustments

If a person with disabilities is put 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 CabinetOfficeRecruitment.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