Lead WebOps/DevOps Engineer

We are looking for an enthusiastic  Lead WebOps and DevOps Engineer working directly to the Principal WebOps DevOps Engineer (Senior Lead) with great leadership and technical skills and a drive to improve the team. You will be responsible for the leadership of the technical teams at Companies House Web and Development Operations, which are a 24x7 team. You will be user and service focused ensuring that value is delivered through improvement and automation of delivery pipelines, service and application support.

Companies House offers a flexible and welcoming culture that promotes a healthy work life balance as well as a proactive approach to wellbeing that allows us to be our best at work. We recognise that people are the key to our success so offer a fantastic benefits package including flexible working with no core hours, 30 days annual leave, 8 bank holidays and 1 privilege day as well as enrolment into the Civil Service Pension scheme with a contribution rate averaging 28%.

Find out more about what a great place Companies House is to work

Job description

Key Deliverables:

• A strong leader with the ability to motivate and sometimes in difficult times, ensuring a focus on career development and innovation while supporting the wellbeing of colleagues. Including Mentoring and leading less experienced members of the team.
• Transparent, flexible and proactive in your approach to build productive working relationships with your manager, team and other departments are key for the teams and your success.
• Managing and delivering business priorities within a complex landscape of process and technology change.
• Proven Technical background ability to lead a highly skilled hard-working team.
• Lead and support any Incident/ Problem to resolution across IT services.
• Will require to do adhoc reporting and data management as and when needed.
• Making sure availability of Web Applications to the public target of 99.5% are adhered to.
• Ensure the correct implementation of standards and procedures. You can identify documentation, capacity issues, monitoring, alerting, performance and stipulating the required changes and instigating these. You know how to initiate remedial action across your team and across other areas of Companies House.
• Keeping abreast and understand the direction for future technologies and the changing architectural landscape within Companies House, and ability to articulate that to your manager and team.

  ** You will also be expected to participate in the on-call rota for your section in line with the current on call agreement to ensure our services remain operational at all times.  This on-call element covers 24/ 7/ 365 and is an essential requirement of the role.

  Person specification

  We're looking for the following, which will be assessed at sift and at interview. Please refer to the experience  (top 3, in bold) and technical bullet point  (top 1, in bold) below when writing your personal statement.

  Experience - Please refer to the 3 bold bullet points in your personal statement

  • Demonstrable Incident/ Problem resolution management. Be at the forefront in the investigation and resolution of incidents, and any write ups with the principal. Help resolve any issues that occur and proactively searching for potential solutions ensuring the right actions are taken to investigate, resolve and anticipate future problems in a timely manner.
  • Experience of Performance tuning, monitoring and alerting others.
  • Understanding of DevOps and Continuous Integration, Delivery methods and techniques.
  • Demonstrable experience of ensuring high availability of systems, for example we would expect you to work with your Principal to agreed service levels (currently 99.5% availability).
  • Manage complex 24x7 high availability Web Applications systems.
  • Preferable development background with experience in scripting, Linux systems, development languages, databases will be an advantage.
  • Mentor, lead and ensure the less experienced members of the team are upskilled.
  • Ensure the correct implementation of standards and procedures. You can identify capacity issues, stipulating the required changes and instigating these. You know how to initiate remedial action.
  • You understand the direction for future technologies.
  • Rapid delivery of user centric services whilst focussing on performance.
  • Experience of managing technical teams in a high-pressure environment, but able to bond with the team and develop their technical journeys.

    Technical - Please refer to the top bullet point (in bold) in your personal statement

    • Unix & Shell Scripting, XML, Databases - Oracle/ Mongo, SQL, Monitoring tools, Kibana, Kafka, AWS.
    • Lambda, Apache, Python, Perl, CI/ CD pipeline tools i.e. Concourse, Jira, Service now, slack, confluence.
    • Agile Methodologies and ITIL 4 Foundation.

      About the team

      Front End Systems Support (FESS). The FESS team look after all the live (and test) web services, for example CHS (and sub services like Apply to be Secure and Emergency Auth code services), Webfiling, Software filing (XMLgateway), Webcheck, CHD and CHCC. We are a 24x7 team that keep the services running (and aim for 99.5% availability) while we deploy all the new code, improvements and bug fixes that development produce to these live services and much more. We also provide daily, monthly, weekly data used for statistical purposes (trend analysis and corporate insight).

      Behaviours

      We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

      • Working Together
      • Managing a Quality Service
      • Making Effective Decisions

        Technical skills

        We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

        • Monitoring and alerting
        • CI build and integration

          Benefits

          We offer an excellent benefits package that includes:

          • a generous 30 days annual leave plus 8 bank holidays and 1 privilege day
          • enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme with a contribution rate of averaging 28%
          • a range of recognition schemes including instant awards to thank and recognise each other's efforts and contributions
          • strong ethos of equality, diversity and inclusion
          • great work life balance with flexible and mobile working available for many roles
          • a pro-active approach to employee wellbeing that allows our employees to flourish and be their best at work and has enabled us to become an Investors In People platinum accredited employer
          • online financial support and advice
          • seasonal flu jabs
          • generous maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave allowances
          • a focus on career development and progression
          • a number of inclusive network groups to support our colleagues and a great sports and social society
          • cycle to work scheme
          • staff discount scheme
          • holiday play scheme for children
          • 3 days paid volunteering leave

            Next Steps

            Click  'Apply Now' to be taken to our main advert Civil Service Jobs where you can see more details regarding the role, the incredible benefits we have to offer and what it's like to work in Companies House.

            If you have any questions about the role or process, please reach out to kjones6@companieshouse.gov.uk.

            This role closes on Sunday 3 November 2024.