Site Reliability Engineering Specialist

BT Group; Ipswich, Birmingham, Greater London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus 10%

Online private GP 24/7

Carers leave 2 weeks

Maternity/paternity/adoption leave

BT product discounts

Pension scheme 5%/10%

Holiday purchase scheme

Job summary

BT Group is seeking a seasoned automation and infrastructure engineer to drive the automation strategy across Professional Services, delivering reliable, scalable platforms with a strong SRE mindset. You will own roadmaps for applications, manage compute and network infrastructure, and lead incident response while collaborating with senior stakeholders to improve service quality.

The role offers a hybrid work model (3 days in office, 2 days from home) in Ipswich, with a comprehensive benefits

Qualifications

• Experience with automation and software engineering practices.
• Strong Python development and testing with CI/CD pipelines.
• Hands-on with Ansible, containers, and networking fundamentals.
• Ability to communicate with stakeholders and lead in high-pressure environments.

Responsibilities

• Actively drive the Professional Services automation strategy.
• Own and contribute to the roadmap for managed apps and BCM planning.
• Manage compute infrastructure hosts including patching and security.
• Build network automation frameworks and CI/CD pipelines.
• Lead incidents and contribute to PIRs within the domain.
• Champion TSA guidelines and compliance.

Skills

Python

CI/CD pipelines

GitLab/Jenkins

Ansible

Docker

Kubernetes

Networking fundamentals

OS Administration

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Git

Jenkins

Job description

Working Style: 3 days a week in office, 2 days as week from home

About the role

Professional Services was formed as a progressive development towards the convergence of multiple domains across BT. We pride ourselves on providing expert third line support to an extensive range of services; ensuring the required levels of availability are maintained. The team is widely recognised for getting things done, while making transformational improvements along the way. We do this by ensuring we have the right people to achieve our high ambitions.

This role is pivotal in driving automation and operational excellence within Professional Services. You’ll lead the automation strategy, evolve development practices and champion an SRE mindset to improve reliability, scalability and performance across our platforms, inclusive of our hosting infrastructure. By leveraging deep technical expertise and end-to-end ownership, you’ll deliver flawless change, enhance service availability, and unlock time for the team to focus on solving business problems. Your work will enable smarter processes, stronger collaboration, and a “brilliant” customer experience, making automation and resilience the foundation of everything we do.

What you’ll be doing

• Actively contributing and drives the Professional Services automation strategy.
• Owns and contributes to the roadmap for the APPID’s we manage, including EoSL planning, application lifecycle, compute requirements & BCM planning.
• Manages compute infrastructure hosts including patching and security vulnerability management.
• Builds network automation frameworks that allow for efficient test, build & deployment of new automated processes, inclusive of CI/CD pipelines. Ensuring we deliver robust code in an efficient manor.
• Enact the Professional Services driverless change ambition, actively looking for potential use cases, starting the conversation and driving for success.
• Contributes to the development of the Professional Services team in the adoption of an SRE approach.
• Participate and be the technical lead on incidents within immediate domain and be part of PIR write up and solution.
• Acts as a subject matter expert for the TSA guidelines, influencing working practices to ensure we remain compliant with industry standards.
• Will champion and build effective working relationships, both internally and externally to deliver business outcomes.
• Responsible for delivering complex network change and providing assurance of Fixed network platforms managed by Professional Services.

Essential Skills / Experience

• Automation & Software Engineering – Strong Python skills, coding best practices, testing, peer reviews, CI/CD pipelines, and experience with GitLab or Jenkins.
• Platform & Infrastructure Engineering – Hands-on experience with Ansible, container technologies (Docker, Podman or similar), and a solid understanding of networking and web/API fundamentals.
• Professional & Operational Excellence – Confident communicator with stakeholders at all levels, including senior leadership, and able to perform effectively in high-pressure environments.
• You will be either a network engineer with automation experience, or an IT infrastructure engineer with expertise in automated deployments looking to move into networking, or a software engineer with strong automation skills seeking to expand into network engineering.

Desirable Skills / Experience

• Strong understanding of IP/MPLS networks.
• Strong proficiency in building CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong knowledge of Ansible, you will have built an Ansible repo from the ground up to perform heavy lift deployment.
• Strong understanding of container orchestration (e.g. Kubernetes).
• Experience working on a production telecommunications environment.
• Experience in new service or product introduction into an operational team.
• OS Administration: Strong system administration skills, across an array of operating systems such as linux, windows etc. with a focus on performance optimisation, security, and automation.
• Cloud Computing: Strong understanding cloud computing and best practices.

Our Package

Tailored benefits make a real difference. That’s why we offer a comprehensive range to support your growth, wellbeing, and everyday life. You can design the package to suit you and your lifestyle. Your core benefits include:

• 10% on target annual bonus
• Access to an online private GP 24/7 for you and your immediate family
• Market-leading paid carers leave with up to 2 weeks off
• Equalized maternity, paternity, and adoption leave – 18 weeks’ full pay and 8 weeks’ half pay
• Discounted EE and BT products, including mobile and broadband
• Market leading Pension scheme – 5% from you and 10% from us
• Holiday purchase scheme

You can select additional benefits, including healthcare, dental, gym memberships and more when you’re ready.

BT Group is the UK’s leading communications group and the holding company behind some of the country’s most recognised brands – including BT, EE, Openreach and Plusnet. Our purpose is as simple as it is ambitious: we connect for good. Our customers include consumers, small, medium and large businesses, public sector organisations and other communications providers.

BT Group’s role is about setting direction, unlocking value and creating the conditions for our brands and businesses to thrive.

Having come through the most capital-intensive phase of our fibre investment, our focus now is on what comes next – simplifying how we operate, using technology and AI to work smarter, and organising ourselves to serve customers better and grow sustainably. Group teams shape strategy, policy, brand, capital allocation and transformation, helping the whole organisation perform at its best.

We have a singular culture that unites all our people: we are customer-first challengers, who are committed, clear and connected. These behaviours unite us as one team to deliver for our colleagues, our customers, our stakeholders and the country. Joining BT Group means working at the heart of a business that matters to the UK, with the opportunity to shape decisions, influence outcomes and help set the future course of one of the country’s most important companies.