Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
Lead Linux Infrastructure Engineer
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East Kilbride
Job Summary
Right now, within government departments and secure facilities around the world, people are making decisions that protect the UK's interests. They're sharing sensitive intelligence, coordinating responses to emerging threats, and collaborating on work that is imperative to UK interests.
They can do this because of Rosa.
Our work is the foundation for what comes next. The government has committed to a programme that will upgrade Rosa to a modern cloud-first platform. But transformation doesn't happen in a vacuum - it happens because the current service is trusted, reliable, and run by people who understand what government actually needs.
We need your help to deliver Rosa brilliantly today. This is how we earn the right to deliver the next generation capability for working at SECRET. Every improvement we make, every incident we resolve, every user we support builds the credibility and capability that makes transformation possible.
Job Description
The successful candidate will need to combine strong technical skills with a consultative approach and lead a team of engineers ensuring services are integrated, delivered, and operated to a high standard.
The role will involve working with enterprise Linux systems and developing an understanding of government security guidance to deliver secure Linux infrastructure services.
For this role as well as maintaining the operational SLA’s you will be expected to translate and deliver architectural designs into operational infrastructure, manage database systems and Linux hosted applications. This role requires a strong user focus and an eye for detail – understanding the technology that is required to facilitate the network infrastructure and be able to work with minimal supervision or as part of a larger team.
In This Role You Will Be Responsible For:
- Responsible for maintaining operational SLA’s for Linux infrastructure incidents across the service, involving both physical and virtual servers, DNS, NTP, RHEL Directory Services, Proxy, database, Satellite and CEPH Infrastructure.
- Responsible for monitoring, alerting and maintenance of the RosaLinux Infrastructure across all environments.
- Leading the Linux team in support of BAU and Project implementation activities. Ensuring the relevant artefacts are in place for the team to be able to support Project and BAU activities.
- Implement strategic and technical roadmaps for the aligned Linux Infrastructure and hosted applications. Ensuring infrastructure is kept up to date.
- Ensure that all new components and installations meet or exceed the RSO internal and regulatory requirements.
- Work within the wider organisations DevOps strategy to provide automated solutions where possible.
- Own responsibility for changes across the environment within your technical discipline and ensure they are implemented according to agreed business processes.
- Monitor trends to be able to proactively respond to issues to support the business needs.
- Develop the creation of documentation, processes, and policies to ensure necessary governance and reporting is in place.
- Responsible for all Incident, Problem and Risk Management within your technical discipline.
- Assisting more junior team members with learning and development as required.
- Liaise with vendors and product owners on product support and product roadmaps.
- Collaborate with the other Lead Engineers across the Engineering function and support on initiatives as needed.
Person specification
Essential
We are looking for someone with:
- Experience in a similar Lead Engineer or Tech team lead role in Linux Engineering in a complex IT Infrastructure.
- Leading a team, managing incident, problem, change and allocating work.
- Acting as the senior technical Linux resource across the engineering function.
- Experience with virtualized networking principles and platforms (VMware/Hyper-V).
- Advanced experience with Bash and Python.
- Good understanding across IT On-Prem and Cloud based.
- Manage Linux certificates across the environment.
- Good experience of squid.
- Responsible for driving all system upgrades across Linux.
- Experience with open-source Ansible automation tooling.
- Good understanding of troubleshooting Linux issues to 4th line.
- Demonstratable experience of Agile / DevOps working practices.
- Experience of systems monitoring infrastructure.
- Working knowledge of Confluence, Jira and JSM.
- Sound understanding of database technologies, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, SQL. tooling infrastructure.
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Desirable
- You will have relevant Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Security or Systems Engineering qualification, or equivalent related qualifications or experience.
- Experience working in a Cloud Infrastructure Environment; AWS, Azure, GCP.
- Experience with managing CEPH Storage or Linux storage environments.
- Experience of Confluence, Jira and JSM administration and upgrades.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Seeing the Big Picture
- Leadership
- Delivering at Pace
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- IT Infrastructure
- Troubleshooting and Problem resolution
- Technical Understanding
Alongside your salary of £57,500, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office contributes £16,657 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).
We understand that people are at the heart of our success. We promote and encourage all our staff to follow continued professional development, offering our staff access to a range of learning and development opportunities.
- A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
- A Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%
- Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
- Work that directly enables UK national security
- The satisfaction of keeping critical infrastructure running for users who depend on it
- The pride of supporting the most sensitive work government does—and knowing it depends on you
- 25 days annual leave (rising to 30), Civil Service pension, genuine flexibility
- A pathway to shaping the future for working at SECRET for HMG
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.
Step 1.
Submit a CV outlining your employment history detailing your responsibilities, skills, accomplishments, plus your qualifications and relevant training. Please ensure you have provided reasons for any gaps within the last two years.
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Step 2.
A Personal Statement of 750 words explaining how you consider your skills, qualities and experience to evidence your suitability for the role, focusing on the essential skills in the job profile.
These responses along with behaviours and technical skills will be explored further during the interview process for shortlisted candidates.
Step 3.
Additional Eligibility Questions. Answers to these questions will determine if you are eligible to apply.
Applications will be sifted anonymously so please remove any biographical data that would identify you.
As part of the online application process, you will be asked several diversity-related questions. If you do not wish to provide a declaration on any of the characteristics, you will have the option to select ‘prefer not to say’. The information you provide when submitting your application will help us monitor the Civil Service commitment to diversity and inclusion. You can refer to the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy for more information.
You will receive an acknowledgment of your application through the online process.
Step 4.
For the interview, an assessment tool will be used in addition to the behaviours and technical skills listed. You will be given details of this prior to interview to prepare.
The technical skills will align to the following framework: Infrastructure engineer - Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework
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 developed vetting (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
Open to UK nationals only.
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 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 (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.
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
Job Contact:
Name: RSO Business Support Email: RSOBusinessSupport@fcdo.gov.uk
Recruitment team
Email: RSOBusinessSupport@fcdo.gov.uk
Further information
If you wish to make a complaint you should email HRDirectUK@fcdo.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response you
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