Application Operations Engineer

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP); Lancashire; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job summary

A UK Government department is seeking an Application Operations Engineer to provide technical expertise and service management for applications. This role requires monitoring, managing, and improving various applications, ensuring service availability. You will also lead incident management, engage with a multi-disciplinary team, and support applications during out-of-hours on-call rotas. A background in ITIL 4 and Agile methodologies is essential for success in this position.

Qualifications

• Experience in IT Service Management in a live service environment.
• Proven technical ability to resolve complex issues.
• Ability to contribute to service improvements.

Responsibilities

• Raising and investigating incidents proactively.
• Monitoring applications for health, availability, and stability.
• Managing change deployments and testing processes.

Skills

Service Management expertise

Incident Management

Problem Management

Change Management

Agile methodologies

ITIL 4

Networking Issue diagnosis

Tools

Linux

Windows servers

Relational databases

Non-relational databases

Cloud-based servers

Third-party software

Job description

Working collaboratively with teams across Digital Group to ensure smooth running of operational processes. Providing service management expertise and technical skills to ensure service availability and the appropriate respond when issues occur. Affectively utilise Incident, Problem, and Change and Release Management as well as automating and innovating via continuous improvement to enhance the services we provide for citizens.

If this is something that interests you, apply today. Please note this role requires you to pass Security Check clearance. For further information, please see ‘Selection process details’. As an Application Operations Engineer, you will support, manage, maintain, and continuously improve a single application or a suite of applications from a technical and IT Service Management perspective. These applications will range in technology, from Linux to Windows servers, relational and non-relational databases, Cloud and On‑Premises based servers and various third‑party software. There is also scope to be involved in the management of certificates and key exchanges and the diagnosing of networking issues. You will follow IT Service Management best practice, using frameworks like ITIL 4, Agile and Scrum to ensure service and operational processes run smoothly and deliver value for the end user community.

Responsibilities

• Proactively and reactively raising and investigating incidents.
• Carry out the investigation of relevant problem records for their applications.
• Actively contributes to the implementation of remedies and preventative measures.
• Proactively monitoring applications to ensure their health, availability, and stability.
• Raising, coordinating, and deploying changes into the test and live estate.
• Carrying out any required testing as part of these releases.
• Actively raise knowledge articles to provide guidance to other users and expand ownership where required.
• Ensure all knowledge articles within the service you support are raised, kept current, reviewed, and are in line with best practice.
• Sharing your knowledge, experience and best practice including with Associate and fellow Application Operations Engineers.
• Escalating to Senior Application Operation Engineers and Lead Application Operation Engineers on success stories and service issues.
• Developing and maintaining strong working relationships with a multi‑disciplinary team, including Service Owners; DevOps and Site Reliability Engineers; Architects; Testers; Business Analysts; Process Owners; external partners; other Government Departments and many others.
• Taking the lead on or contributing to the identification and where possible implementation of continual service improvements with regards to both technical and process improvements.
• Actively raise risks when identified during your course of work and escalating ownership where required.
• Being an active member of Centralised Application Support Services function, sharing best practice and knowledge across the function.
• Take accountability for the development of the associate members within your team.
• Have a good range of technical skills allowing you to carry out the investigation of regular issues and implementation of routine changes. Have escalation routes for more complex issues. Share your knowledge with Associate Application Operations Engineer.

You will also be required to support your applications out of hours through a scheduled on‑call rota. There will be a contractual requirement to join an on‑call rota providing overnight cover, for example, 16:00 - 08:00 on weekdays, and 24 hours for weekends and bank holidays. The cover is shared around the team and would normally equate to being on‑call for a week, every other week.

Are you experienced in live service IT Service Management? Do you want to help shape a constantly evolving function in one of UK government's largest IT environments? Do you pride yourself in having the technical ability to fix complex issues and continuously improve systems? Disability Confident. A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high‑volume, seasonal and high‑peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non‑disabled people. For more details please go to .