Lead DevSecOps Engineer

Job summary

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime and migration.

Corporate Platform Engineering sits at the centre of ONS’ digital delivery model, providing the secure, reliable and reusable platform foundations that enable Digital Services and product teams to deliver business outcomes at pace. Its mission is to provide reliable, secure, reusable and well-supported platform services that help teams deliver faster and with lower operational risk, reducing duplication and allowing product teams to focus their effort on meeting user and business needs.

By setting clear standards, providing well-supported “paved roads”, and enabling safe adoption of cloud, automation and AI-assisted engineering practices, Corporate Platform Engineering helps strengthen ONS’ ability to deliver resilient, secure and sustainable digital services that support critical decision-making across the UK.

Job description

Lead DevSecOps Engineers are responsible for shaping and delivering technical services, products and platforms of high complexity using secure by design principles and infrastructure as code. A Lead DevSecOps Engineer provides technical leadership across teams and contributes to the development of the strategic direction.

They advocate organisational, cross-Government and cross-sector strategies for product and service engineering, provide technical leadership and guidance through coaching and mentoring, and drive the sharing of knowledge and good standards of practice across the communities.

Working as a member of the Platform Enablement team in Corporate Platform Engineering, the Lead DevSecOps Engineer will have broad knowledge of public cloud infrastructure including AWS, GCP and Azure, with perhaps specialist knowledge in one or more of these clouds. They will provide support to the wider platform engineering and product delivery teams in solving complex problems. The role will also require an awareness of how AI and automation capabilities can be safely applied within cloud and platform engineering contexts, in line with ONS strategy and governance.

They will be working together with the Delivery Managers, Service Managers, colleague Lead DevSecOps Engineers, Business Analysts, Security Advisors and Technical Architects to consult, refine, prioritise, risk assess and mobilise work for the branch; they will be accountable for ensuring continuously improved patterns of delivery, including automation and AI-assisted engineering are available for consumption by the product teams throughout the infrastructure development lifecycle. This role is pivotal for providing ‘paved roads’ for product teams and accelerating their journey in building data ingest, data analysis and data output systems to inform critical decision-making across the UK.

Responsibilities

• Advocate and develop medium-to-long term strategies for products and services.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance through coaching and mentoring.
• Lead the sharing of knowledge and good practice.
• Have deep technical knowledge, providing support to delivery teams and solving complex problems.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

• Programming and Build (Practitioner) - Collaborate with others when necessary to review specifications. Use the agreed specifications to design, code, test and document programs or scripts of medium-to-high complexity, using the right standards and tools. You contribute to code reviews and give constructive feedback to others.
• Information Security (Expert) - Design, review and quality assure solutions and services, ensuring that they are specifically engineered to mitigate security threats. Lead others in using appropriate information security practices.
• Service Support (Expert) - Identify, locate and fix complex service faults. Advise others on different methodologies and types of service support.
• Availability and Capacity Management (Working) - You can: Manage service components to ensure they meet business needs and key performance indicators (KPIs).
• Community collaboration (practitioner) - Actively support and contribute to the community (for example, leading the development and implementation of community events, supporting cross-community work, community working group involvement). Advocate for and role model participation in the community, exemplifying the value of community collaboration.Advocate for and role model the sharing of knowledge and experience through mentoring, shadowing and coaching opportunities.

Behaviours

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

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Delivering at Pace
• Changing and Improving

Technical skills

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

• Programming and build (Practitioner)
• Information Security (Expert)
• Service Support (Expert)
• Availability and capacity management (Working)

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £60,007, Office for National Statistics contributes

£17,384 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).

The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our valued colleagues across the organisation.

Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that our careers site will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.

Inclusion & Accessibility

At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.

As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.

I f you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.

ONS are committed to flexible ways of working that support a healthy work-life balance. ONS has already considered how this job could be right sized for applicants working flexibly and we are happy to explore options with you about working part time, in a job share or flexibly, in line with our hybrid working policies.

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.

Security Clearance

For ONS the requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying and the department will consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.

If you are unsure that you meet the eligibility above, please read the information available on Gov.uk on this link or contact the recruitment email on the advert before applying to discuss, as failure to meet the residency requirements will result in your security clearance application being rejected and any offer of employment being withdrawn.

At the point of SC application, you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:

• Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
• UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
• Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
• Security Services records

Please note we will reach out to you once the advert has closed to confirm eligibility for this role, this will be via an e-mail. Please check your junk e-mails for any correspondence.

Visa Sponsorship

ONS may be able to provide visa sponsorship where the role meets ONS sponsorship criteria and all relevant Home Office requirements. Applicants must hold, or be eligible to obtain, the right to work in the UK before employment commences.

Application Process

• Number of Stages: 2 stage process
• Stage 1: Application
• Stage 2: Interview
• Stage 1 – Application

The assessment process at the application stage will be based on your work history, CV, skills, experience, and personal statement . It is important that your application is tailored to highlight the skills, knowledge, and experience relevant to the role.

A personal statement is required at application stage, the maximum word count allowed is 1250 words , which should not be exceeded. You should provide evidence for each essential skill criterion listed in the person specification. As these criteria are scored, it is advisable to give clear examples for each one, including the impact of your actions, ideally utilising the STAR technique (Situation, Task, Action, Result).

Please note that Success Profiles Behaviour examples are not required at this stage of the application process.

In instances where a high number of applications are received, the sift pass mark may be adjusted, and candidates will be invited to interview based on merit order, i.e., those with the highest scores.

When a high volume of applications are received, the sift pass mark may be adjusted. Candidates will be invited to interview based on their merit order, with those achieving the highest scores being prioritised. Applicants who score below the adjusted pass mark but still pass will be placed on hold and may be invited to interview at a later date.

We often have similar roles available at different grades. If a candidate is suitable for a similar role or a lower grade than they have applied for, we may offer the candidate that role without the need to go through a further selection process providing the role has the same behaviours, and essential skills.

Stage 2 – Interview

If invited to interview, you will be assessed using techniques aligned with the Civil Service Success Profiles framework, covering all behaviours listed in the job advert and any required technical skills .

You will be required to provide a 10 minute presentation at interview. The presentation topic will be emailed to candidates who have passed the initial online application stage, 1 week prior to interview. This presentation will assess candidates against the Success Profiles Behaviour Changing and improving .

Interviews will be via Microsoft Teams.

Please note you will be asked to provide ID at the start of the interview.

A reserve list may be held for a period up to 12 mont