Senior Site Reliability Engineer

Details

Reference number

429297

Salary

£63,824 - £83,778

London: £67,547 to £83,778 / National: £63,824 - £80,158 (including allowance). Salary offer within this range is dependent on technical skills as assessed at interview.

A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

GBP

Job grade

Grade 7### Contract type

Permanent### Business area

DBT - CS - Digital, Data and Technology### Type of role

Administration / Corporate Support

Digital

Information Technology

Operational Delivery

Other### Working pattern

Flexible working, Full-time, Part-time### Number of jobs available

4

Contents

Location

About the job

Benefits

Things you need to know

Apply and further information

Location

Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, London, SalfordAbout the job

Job summary

If you would like to find out more about the role, the Site Reliability Engineering team and what it’s like to work at DBT, we are holding a Hiring Manager Q\&A session for this role where you can virtually 'meet the team' on Friday 17th October at 12:30pm. Please click here to book your spot.

About us

The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has a clear mission - to grow the economy. Our role is to help businesses invest, grow and export to create jobs and opportunities right across the country. We do this in three ways.

Firstly, we help to build a strong, competitive business environment, where consumers are protected and companies rewarded for treating their employees properly.

Secondly, we open international markets and ensure resilient supply chains. This can be through Free Trade Agreements, trade facilitation and multilateral agreements.

Finally, we work in partnership with businesses every day, providing advance, finance and deal-making support to those looking to start up, invest, export and grow.

The Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) directorate develops and operates tools and services to support us in this mission.

About the role

We are on a mission to build a new cutting-edge developer platform in AWS and support DBT services running on the platform.

Can we rely on you to make us more reliable? We need Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) to make sure our internet services work as users expect.

Job description

As a Senior Site Reliability Engineer you will work to give development teams the tools for their job, including application performance monitoring, exception, log and metrics aggregation, dashboards, and declarative CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous delivery) pipelines.

You’ll evangelise product teams about service-level indicators, objectives, and error budgets, and negotiate them. You’ll help build and scale our global product platform and participate in an on-call rota for which you will receive an additional allowance.

Specific projects the team are working on include rolling out an observability tool to enhance system monitoring and incident response and streamlining deployment processes to reduce downtime and speed up feature delivery.

Out of the 4 positions available, one of these posts will have line management responsibilities but we expect all of our Senior Site Reliability Engineers to coach and mentor junior colleagues across DDaT.

You will be using:

Amazon Web Services

Azure

AWS CodePipelines and AWS CodeBuild

Terraform \& AWS Copilot (CloudFormation)

Docker, Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Elastic Container Registry (ECR)

ElasticSearch/OpenSearch

Python and Django framework

PostgreSQL as a service (Amazon RDS)

Sentry

Redis/Elasticache

Person specification

It is essential that you have:

Cloud experience with either Amazon Web Services, Azure or Google Cloud.

Ability to build code-defined, reliable, and well tested infrastructure on top of cloud computing systems (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi).

Experience and fluency in one or more programming languages, writing clean and effective code.

Experience in designing, analysing, and troubleshooting distributed systems.

Knowledge of Linux/Unix fundamentals and TCP/IP networking.

Ability to see user impact in the infrastructure changes.

Excellent communication skills when dealing with both technical and non-technical stakeholders

It is desirable that you have:

Experience in defining and measuring Service Level Objectives through observability.

Experience in prototyping through reuse of existing Open-Source components.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £63,824, Department for Business and Trade contributes £18,489 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.* 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

Selection process details

How to apply

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 to complete a short, pre-recorded video screening interview (alternately you can provide written answers to questions). Inspire People will assess your application against the essential criteria listed above to compile a longlist of applications, which will then be sifted by DBT 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 Behavioursfrom 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 will 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. DBT’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. DBT employees work in a hybrid pattern, spending 2-3 days a week (pro rata) in the office on average. Travel to your primary office location will not be paid for by DBT, 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 DBT, 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 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.### 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)

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

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code 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 .

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 the advertised vacancy.### Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy .Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans initiative.

The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.### Contact point for applicants

Name : DDaT Recruitment

Email : ddat.recruitment@businessandtrade.gov.uk

Email : ddat.recruitment@businessandtrade.gov.uk

Further information

Our recruitment process is underpinned by the principle of appointment on the basis of fair and open competition and appointment on merit, as outlined in the Civil Service Commissioners’ Recruitment Principles. If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with these principles and you wish to make a complaint, you should in the first instance contact DBT by email at Resourcing@trade.gov.uk If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, you can contact the Civil Service Commission, which regulates all Civil Service recruitment. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages: Civil Service Commission Complaints