Lead DevOps Engineer at Department for Work & Pensions, Newcastle/Remote, 6 Months, £Contract Rate

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy. As the UK's biggest public service department, it administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to around 20 million claimants and customers. As such, we operate on a scale that is almost unmatched anywhere in Europe and most people in Britain come into contact with us at some point in their lives.Working with DWP, you will be helping us to drive our priorities to:Run an effective welfare system that enables people to achieve financial independence by providing assistance and guidance into employmentIncrease saving for, and security in later lifeCreate a fair and affordable welfare system which improves the life chances of childrenDeliver outstanding services to our customers and claimantsDeliver efficiently: transform the way we deliver our services to reduce costs and increase productivity.

 

As a Lead DevOps Engineer, your main responsibilities will be:

 

Essential:Working within the Departments Digital Channels function focusing on the department 's outbound notification services and evidence storage and retrieval. Leading a small (~8 person) DevOps team responsible for several critical pieces of DWP systems. Creating low-level design and implementation standards for cloud infrastructure and configuration management. Providing technical Leadership to support Software Development teams. Supporting production services at large scale and developing solutions to empower support teams.  Utilising technical skills to handle and resolve queries from engineers and participate in technical efforts where appropriate. Provide expert advice to semi/non-technical colleagues including Senior Stakeholders. Support development of our local Engineering community to thrive and collaborate under the "DevOps " principles/ideology, and advocate for these individuals at a senior level. Desirable:SC Clearance is an essential requirement for this role, as a minimum you must be eligible and willing to undergo these checks. AWS - Expert. Must have strong working experience in Amazon Web Services. Terraform - Expert. GitLab CI/CD or other similar CI/CD platform. Demonstrated ability to build and deploy complex environments and configurations using IaC (Terraform mandatory, Ansible desirable) via a CI/CD Pipeline. Python and/or JavaScript - Working knowledge. Bash. Ansible experience (desirable). Must have experience coaching and supporting junior engineers. Excellent understanding of Enterprise level architecture, particularly in the cloud. Experience working with Cloud native technologies and a working knowledge/experience working in on-premise and/or legacy stacks. Understanding of Network architecture and fundamentals. Strong understanding of "serverless " technologies such as Lambda. Excellent diagnostic skills.  Ability to lead a DevOps culture within our area, with the support of the wider departmental DevOps/Engineering community. Prior experience in Public Sector preferred. Software Development and/or IT/Operations background would be helpful. Containers not currently in use, but knowledge to support future scope for work preferred.

 

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.Disability Confident As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, DWP guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group.Armed Forces CovenantDWP guarantees to interview veterans or spouses / partners of military personnel who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates / military spouses or partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group.In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different.