Lead DevOps Engineer

DWP Digital; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

DWP Digital is seeking a Lead DevOps Engineer to drive innovation within the UK's largest government department. This significant position offers competitive pay, hybrid working, and extensive opportunities for professional development while leading teams in transformative public services delivery.

Benefits

Flexible working hours

Civil service pension with 28.97% contributions

Generous leave package starting at 26 days

Time off for volunteering

Professional development opportunities

Qualifications

• Experience leading DevOps platform engineering teams.
• Proven experience with AWS or Azure.
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code methodologies.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategic initiatives in DevOps practices.
• Manage technical roadmaps and team delivery.
• Design and scale complex cloud-based systems.

Skills

Leadership

Stakeholder Engagement

Cloud Systems Design

Infrastructure-as-Code

CI/CD Pipelines

Job description

Join to apply for the Lead DevOps Engineer role at DWP Digital

Join to apply for the Lead DevOps Engineer role at DWP Digital

This range is provided by DWP Digital. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.

Base pay range

Direct message the job poster from DWP Digital

Pay up to £89,995 plus 28.97% employer pension contributions, hybrid working, flexible hours, and great work life balance.

This is a real and significant DevOps leadership role in the UK's largest government department. Here you will have the freedom and autonomy to drive the development of our technical landscape and define what DevOps looks like in DWP

DWP. Digital with Purpose.

We're looking for a Lead DevOps Engineer who has the vision to lead multiple teams through the adoption of cutting-edge infrastructure and development technologies.

You'll be a leading, expert voice in a DWP Digital community that is driving a once-in-a-generation transformation of public services.

We have a unique purpose - putting better, more efficient services in the hands of DWP users. The scale of our engineering challenge is also huge:

• We have 1bn lines of code in over 12,000 code repos and 90+ programming languages.
• We run around 294 days' worth of testing every day through automation.
• Our APIs receive 173 million requests, and we spin up 280,000 AWS servers every month.
• Over 22 million people - 1/3 of the UK's adult population - access our services daily.
• Over 100,000 colleagues and agents use the kit, tools and systems we roll out. We build and maintain systems behind payments worth over £195bn payments annually.

What skills, knowledge and experience will you need?

• Lead criterion: Experience leading and managing high-performing DevOps/platform engineering teams, including line management, career development, coaching, and driving delivery against strategic goals.
• Strong cross-functional leadership and stakeholder engagement skills, with experience coordinating across business areas, reporting to senior leadership, balancing competing priorities, and steering team efforts toward shared objectives.
• A demonstrated ability to own and maintain technical roadmaps, ensuring systems and products are aligned with business needs, remain compliant and secure, and have forward plans for scaling, lifecycle management, and tech debt reduction.
• Proven experience designing, delivering, and scaling complex cloud-based systems in AWS and/or Azure, with full ownership across the lifecycle-from architecture and deployment through optimisation, upgrades, and decommissioning.
• Significant proven experience in designing and implementing Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and related as-code paradigms -including Configuration-as-Code, Policy-as-Code, and Pipeline-as-Code - with a focus on establishing enterprise-grade scaleable patterns, governance, and security. Demonstrated ability to define standards and reusable modules that promote consistency, compliance, and operational excellence across teams and environments.
• Track record of architecting, implementing, and evolving secure, resilient, and scalable CI/CD pipelines, aligned with DevOps best practices and integrated with quality, security, and observability tooling.

You and your role

Our Lead DevOps Engineers lead and set the strategy as well as build our products and applications - with researchers, testers, architects, analysts and designers - as part of multi-functional agile delivery teams.

You'll also be part of a supportive Engineering community of practice, with hundreds of engineering experts from across the UK united by passion and purpose. We'll give you the tools and time to build your capability, with coaching, mentoring, qualifications and formal learning, meet-ups or whatever else works for you.

Location: You'll join us in one of our brilliant digital hubs in Leeds, Manchester or Newcastle whichever is most convenient for you.

Hybrid Working: We work a hybrid model - you'll spend some time working at home and some time collaborating face to face in a hub.

Pay: We offer competitive pay of up to £89,995.

Pension: You'll get a brilliant civil service pension with employer contributions worth 28.97%, worth over £21,000 per year.

Holidays: A generous leave package starting at 26 days rising to 31 days over time.

You can also take up to 3 extra days off a month on flexi-time. You'll also get all the usual public holidays.

We have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:

• An award-winning environment and culture: Employer of the Year 2023 (Women In IT Awards), Founders Award for Outstanding Digital Leadership 2023 (Digital 100)
• Flexible working including flexible hours and flex-friendly policies
• Time off volunteering and charitable giving
• Bring your authentic self to work with 'I Can Be Me in DWP'
• Discounts and savings on shopping, fun days out and more
• Interest-free loans to buy a bike or a season ticket, so it's even easier for you to get to work and start making a difference
• Professional development, coaching, mentoring and career progression opportunities.

Process:

We know your time is valuable, so our application and selection process are just two stages:

Apply: Complete your application on Civil Service Jobs. There'll be full instructions when you click through.

Interview: a single stage interview online.

CLICK APPLY for more information and to start your application.

Seniority level

• Seniority level

  Mid-Senior level

Employment type

• Employment type

  Full-time

Job function

• Job function

  Engineering, Information Technology, and Management

• Industries

  Desktop Computing Software Products, Embedded Software Products, and Technology, Information and Internet

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