Senior DevOps Engineer

Person specification

You will combine substantial hands-on engineering experience with technical leadership. You will make sound decisions under uncertainty, explain risks and trade-offs clearly, collaborate effectively with multidisciplinary teams and suppliers, and improve engineering practice through coaching, reusable approaches and constructive challenge.

Required Experience

• Designing, building and operating secure, reliable AWS-based infrastructure and production services, including making and owning decisions throughout their lifecycle.
• Using Terraform to design, manage and improve infrastructure as code, including reusable modules, testing, change control and state management.
• Designing and maintaining CI/CD workflows.
• Applying secure software-delivery and cloud-security practices, including identity and access management, secrets handling, vulnerability management and automated security checks.
• Observability, incident response, recovery, performance and capacity planning.
• Diagnosing complex delivery or operational problems across application, infrastructure and organisational boundaries.
• Providing technical leadership across multiple teams, coaching engineers, setting or improving engineering approaches, and influencing delivery decisions without relying on direct line-management authority.
• Communicating technical decisions, risks and trade-offs to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Desirable Experience

• Containerised, Kubernetes or serverless workloads.
• Creating reusable platform capabilities or self-service tooling.
• Government standards and guidance, including the Service Standard, Technology Code of Practice or NCSC guidance.
• Open source, open standards and working in the open.

Alongside your salary of £64,811, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government contributes £18,775 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).

At MHCLG we offer many benefits that range from tailored career pathways and flexible working to MyLifestyle Childcare Voucher and Cycle to Work Schemes. For more information, please click here.

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

Application and Selection

The application process will be split into 2 stages, testing the following Success Profiles:

• Behaviours
• Experience
• Technical

Please ensure your CV does not contain any personally identifiable information.

Note: We do not consider direct CV applications. All applications must be submitted via the provided application link.

Stage 1: Sift (CV)

Experience

CV and supporting evidence assessed against the required experience, with the lead criterion focused on designing, building and operating secure, reliable AWS-based infrastructure and production services.

Most of our campaigns utilise multiple assessors and so it is possible that each of your answers would be viewed by different assessors.

Stage 2: Interview

• Behaviours: Making Effective Decisions, Communicating and Influencing, Changing and Improving
• Experience: Experience questions will be based around the essential skills and criteria as listed in the job description.
• Technical: Technical questions will be based around the essential skills and criteria as listed in the job description.

Candidates will be asked to prepare a ten minute presentation assessing on technical success profiles, with details to follow for successful candidates.

Sift and Interview Dates

Sifting is envisaged to take place from 12th October 2026 with interview dates to follow.

Group 1 Digital and Data roles

MHCLG has implemented the Digital and Data capability framework for Group 1 roles. Applicants that are successful and have been offered a position will be required to complete a capability assessment after the interview.

MHCLG will honour completed capability assessments for this role from other Government Departments for existing civil servants on level transfer only. Please provide a copy of your capability assessment to the Hiring Manager when applying. If you have any queries on pay, please contact the Hiring Manager.

Each experience or technical skill is assessed between 1-3, representing working towards, at or above the job level requirements. You are awarded a proficiency level accordingly, and you will be given opportunity to annually re assess your capability and potentially increase your overall remuneration, through payment of allowances, depending on level of assessed capability.

Candidates moving from another government department have the option to retain their current basic pay if this is within our pay band for the relevant grade.

G7 Group 1 Digital and Data Salary

The basic pay for this role will be between £70,677 (London), £64,811(National). Candidates will usually be recruited to the median of the payscale. A digital allowance of up to £12,894 (National) or £12,736 (London) may also be payable depending on the level of assessed capability, in order to meet the MHCLG overall targeted remuneration rate for the specific grade, location and capability rating. For applicants in receipt of existing allowances, we will assess each case individually, but would seek not to exceed the MHCLG overall targeted remuneration rate for the specific grade, location and capability rating for existing civil servants, the usual policy on level transfer and promotion will apply, subject to the statements above.

How We Recruit

Find out everything you need to know before applying here..

• Applying
• Sifting
• Interview
• Interview Results & Feedback
• Reserve List
• Near Miss
• Civil Service Grades
• We are a DCS, RIS & GPTWV employer
• Reasonable Adjustments

How To Apply

What you need to know before applying.

Here’s a link to the MHCLG Digital blog

You must review the following information from the MHCLG Career's Site before submitting your application. This step is essential to ensure your eligibility for the role and that your application is completed correctly.

• Security Clearance Requirements
• Civil Service Nationality Requirements
• Right to Work