Application Operations Engineer

Government Recruitment Service; Newcastle upon Tyne; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

A government agency is seeking an Application Operations Engineer to join its Centralised Application Support Services function. The role involves managing and improving applications, ensuring service availability, troubleshooting technical issues, and participating in on-call support. Candidates should possess strong IT Service Management skills and experience with diverse technologies. This position provides an opportunity to contribute to service improvements within one of the UK's largest IT environments.

Qualifications

• Experience in IT Service Management following best practices.
• Technical ability to manage applications across multiple technologies.
• Ability to proactively monitor applications for stability.

Responsibilities

• Monitor applications to ensure health, availability, and stability.
• Raise and investigate incidents to troubleshoot user issues.
• Contribute to continuous service improvements with insights.

Skills

IT Service Management

Incident Management

Problem Management

Change Management

Technical troubleshooting

Communication

Tools

ITIL 4

Agile

Scrum

Linux

Windows

Cloud Technologies

Job description

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?

The primary role of Centralised Application Support Services (CASS) is to provide application operations which deliver continuity of service for our users across DWP Digital services.

As an Application Operations Engineer, you will be:

• 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. This includes:

• Proactively and reactively raising and investigating incidents. Troubleshooting issues reported by users and responding to customer requests.
• 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 elevate ownership where required.
• Ensure all knowledge articles within the service you support are raised and are kept current, reviewed and are in line with best practice.

You will also work in a team with other Application Operations Engineers. This includes:

• 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 elevate ownership where required.
• Being an active member of Centralised Application Support Services function, sharing best practice and knowledge across the function.
• You will also take accountability for the development of the associate members within your team.
• You will have a good range of technical skills allowing you to carry out the investigation of regular issues and implementation of routine changes. You will have escalation routes for more complex issues. You will be expected to 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.