Senior Site Reliability Engineer – Python

Job summary

If you would like to find out more about the role, the SRE team and what it’s like to work at BIST, we are holding a Hiring Manager Q&A session for this role where you can virtually 'meet the team' on Tuesday 8th September at 12:30pm. Please click here  to book your spot.   

About us

The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST) helps businesses invest, innovate, export and grow across the UK. Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) helps deliver this by designing, building and running the services, platforms and technology that businesses and colleagues rely on every day.

Our teams work on a wide range of services and technologies, including:

• digital services that help businesses access government support, guidance and opportunities
• data and AI products that support decision making and enable innovation
• internal tools and services that help colleagues work more effectively
• secure technology and platforms that support critical government services
• cyber security services that protect systems, data and users

By joining DDaT, you'll work on services used by businesses, colleagues and citizens across the UK. You'll be part of multidisciplinary teams focused on improving services, solving complex problems and delivering better outcomes for users.

We are committed to creating an inclusive and supportive workplace. In recognition of this, we were named Best Public Sector Employer at the Women in Tech Employer Awards 2025 !

About the role

As a Senior Site Reliability Engineer (DevOps), you will play a key role in designing, building and running reliable, scalable and secure platform services that underpin critical BIST digital products. Working in multidisciplinary, agile teams, you’ll help ensure development teams have the tools and support they need, from observability and monitoring through to CI/CD pipelines so services are resilient, performant and centred around user needs. You’ll champion good engineering practices, helping teams use data and insight to continuously improve how services are delivered and operated. 

This is a hands-on role where you’ll spend much of your time building and improving platform capabilities directly. You’ll work closely with product managers, architects and engineers to improve reliability and reduce operational burden, while also supporting and mentoring others across the engineering community. You’ll contribute to building and scaling our global platform, support live services through an on-call rota, and play an active role in initiatives such as enhancing observability and streamlining deployment processes to improve service quality and delivery outcomes. 

Job description

You will:

• Build and maintain shared service products enabling developers to be more efficient.
• Write clean, maintainable and well-tested code to support platform and tooling development.
• Work closely with development teams to provide and improve platform tooling, including monitoring, logging, metrics, dashboards and CI/CD pipelines.
• Build, maintain and improve reliable, secure and scalable cloud-based infrastructure using infrastructure-as-code approaches.
• Support teams to adopt SRE practices, including Service Level Indicators (SLIs), Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and error budgets.
• Contribute to observability across services, helping teams better understand performance, reliability and user impact.
• Develop and improve CI/CD pipelines to enable safe, frequent and low-risk delivery of changes.
• Collaborate with product, delivery and architecture colleagues to ensure platform services meet user and business needs.
• Support live service operations, including incident response, troubleshooting and problem management, with a focus on learning and continuous improvement.
• Share knowledge and provide coaching and mentoring to colleagues, contributing to a supportive and inclusive engineering community.
• Contribute to improving security, resilience and compliance practices within the platform.

What tech will you be using?

• Python and Django framework
• PostgreSQL as a service (Amazon RDS)
• Redis/Elasticache
• AWS and Azure
• GitHub Actions and AWS CodePipelines/CodeBuild
• Terraform
• Docker, Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Elastic Container Registry (ECR)
• ElasticSearch/OpenSearch
• Datadog and Logstash

Person specification

It is essential that you have:

• Experience writing clean, maintainable code in at least one programming language.
• Experience designing, operating and improving distributed systems, with a focus on reliability, performance and user impact.
• Experience of building applications hosted in a containerised environment.
• Knowledge of Linux/Unix fundamentals and TCP/IP networking.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to build effective working relationships with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Benefits

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

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

As part of the  application process  you will be asked to upload a 2-page CV which outlines your experience, skills and fit for the role, and go through a multi-stage screening process. If you’re longlisted, you’ll be asked to complete a short, pre-recorded video screening interview (alternately you can provide written answers to questions). Inspire People will assess your full application against the essential criteria listed above to compile a shortlist of applications, which will then be sifted by BIST hiring managers. If you are successful, you will be invited to interview.    

It is likely that the sift will take place 1-2 weeks after the closing date and interviews 3-5 weeks after the closing date, though this is subject to change.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be a useful tool to support your application, but all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate, and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism is identified (such as 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 for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

How we interview

At the interview stage for this role, you will be asked to demonstrate relevant Technical Skills and Behaviours   from the  Success Profiles  framework. A role-specific list of these can be found below.

  The technical element within the interview, where you will be asked a series of questions to demonstrate your specific professional skills and knowledge related directly to the job role and context, will assess against capabilities which are outlined under DevOps engineer within the DDaT framework which can be found here . As part of this process, you will be asked to complete a technical problem-solving exercise during your interview. Further details will be provided following sift. 

Technical Skills

• Availability and capacity management
• Development process optimisations
• Information security
• Modern standards approach
• Programming and build (software engineering)
• Prototyping (with MVP and POC)
• Systems integration
• User focus

Behaviours

• Communicating and Influencing
• Developing Self and Others

How we offer

Offers may be made in merit order based on location preferences. If you pass the bar at interview but are not the highest scoring you will be held on a 12-month reserve list in case a role becomes available. If you are judged a near miss at interview, you may be offered a post at the grade below the one you applied for.

This role requires SC clearance . BIST’s requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years. Failure to meet this requirement will result in your application being rejected and your offer will be withdrawn.

Checks will also be made against:

• 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 record
• location details

More about us

This role can only be worked from within the UK, not overseas. If you are based in London, you will receive London weighting. BIST employees are contracted to work in a hybrid pattern, spending 2-3 days a week (pro rata) in the office. Travel to your primary office location will not be paid for by BIST, but costs for travel to an office which is not your main location will be covered.

You can find out more about our office locations, how we calculate salaries, our diversity statement and reasonable adjustments, the Recruitment Principles, the Civil Service code and our complaints procedure on our website .

Find out more about life at BIST, our benefits and meet the team by watching our video or reading our blog!

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a basic (or equivalent) criminal record check.

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window) .

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window) .

People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• 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) (opens in a new window)
• 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

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window) .

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for th