Job summary
The Government Digital Service (GDS) is part of the Cabinet Office. We work at the very centre of government to make user-focused digital transformation happen. We build and maintain common platforms, products and tools to use and create great public services that are accessible, inclusive and easy to use. We also work with departments to identify patterns, share learning and create change to make government more efficient.
Our teams are organised around delivering on our priorities:
1. make it easier for people to find what they are looking for on
2. build common service platforms to make it simpler and cheaper quality digital services
3. promote agile, user-centred design practices both in the UK and worldwide
One Login Programme represents a once in a generation and career opportunity to simplify and widen access to all digital government services. Sitting at the heart of the government, we are building one simple, safe and secure way for users to log in and prove who they are that will work across all government services.
Effective identity assurance is central to digital transformation and One Login enables people to prove who they are online, with the necessary level of confidence to access and use particular services. Our technology runs on AWS, using serverless compute and storage products. Backend services are written in TypeScript/ and JVM technologies. Web applications also use TypeScript.
One Login programme is full of talented and passionate people who are focussed on delivering high quality products for services. We�re half way through our build phase and features are being shipped weekly as we work to mature our product so we can expand the range of services and departments benefitting from our work.�
One Login is being designed and built for the many. It will unite services across government, revolutionising the way government departments interact digitally with users. One Login will deliver an accessible and essential function that will change lives and help millions.
Come and join a well motivated and multi-disciplined delivery team working to deliver on our commitments and roadmap. We are an ambitious, fast paced and visionary team, have a background in software delivery and are used to working in a scaled agile environment then this could be the place for you!
Find out more at the GDS.
Job description
As a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at GDS you will:
4. be part of one of our multidisciplinary service teams working with and supporting front-end and back-end developers, delivery and product managers, tech writers and architects
5. build and maintain resilient, highly available and secure systems to meet the needs of our users
6. take responsibility for solving complex and interesting problems
7. create infrastructure as code to ensure our infrastructure and deployment pipelines are reusable, repeatable and reliable
8. ensure our systems are appropriately monitored and instrumented to enable our teams to identify and respond to operational issues quickly and effectively�
9. build CI/CD pipelines to enable our developers to get their code into production as quickly and safely as possible
10. act as a digital ambassador, sharing experiences through public speaking and blog posts
11. participate in our in-hours 2nd line and out-of-hours support rotas to gain empathy for users and awareness of operational concerns
12. share knowledge of tools and practices with your wider team and peers to drive consistency and maintain our high engineering standards
13. directly line-manage 2-4 technologists, supporting their career progression, development and wellbeing, and providing regular coaching and performance feedback
Person specification
We�re interested in people who:
14. are experienced with Linux operating system internals and are comfortable working with Linux virtual machines or containers
15. have experience of working with technologies that underpin digital services such as databases, web servers, DNS, CDNs, reverse proxies, message queues and load balancers
16. have experience of cloud infrastructure providers such as AWS
17. are familiar with container orchestration technologies such as Kubernetes, ECS or Cloud Foundry; or serverless application design such as AWS Lambda
18. have an understanding of SRE principles such as capacity planning, SLOs and SLIs and how to design and support resilient, large scale, high performance services in a production environment
19. can deploy monitoring tools to ensure systems are appropriately monitored and instrumented to enable teams to identify and respond to operational issues quickly and effectively
20. are familiar with at least one programming language (we use, Java, Python, Ruby and Go)
21. are very proficient using Git for version control
22. understand the benefits of continuous integration and continuous deployment and have experience with CI/CD tools such as Concourse, Jenkins, GitHub Actions and CodePipeline
23. have a strong preference for automation and experience of using Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform or CloudFormation
24. are able to use automated testing and test-driven development (TDD) to validate solutions and maintain code quality
25. have a good understanding of security principles and how to keep large operational services secure
26. have experience of leading a technical team or project
27. have some experience of line management, helping colleagues with their career development or coaching others
Benefits
The benefits of working at GDS
There are many benefits of working at GDS, including:
28. flexible hybrid working with flexi-time and the option to work part-time or condensed hours
29. a Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 27%
30. 25 days of annual leave, increasing by a day each year up to a maximum of 30 days
31. an extra day off for The King�s birthday
32. an in-year bonus scheme to recognise high performance
33. career progression and coaching, including a training budget for personal development
34. paid volunteering leave
35. a focus on wellbeing with access to an employee assistance programme
36. job satisfaction from making government services easier to use and more inclusive for people across the UK
37. advances on pay, including for travel season tickets
38. death in service benefits
39. cycle to work scheme and facilities
40. access to children's holiday play schemes across different locations in central London
41. access to an employee discounts scheme
42. 10 learning days per year
43. volunteering opportunities (5 special leave days per year)
44. access to a suite of learning activities through Civil Service learning
GDS offers hybrid working for all employees. This means that everyone does some working from home and also spends some time in their local office. You�ll agree to your hybrid working arrangement with your line manager in line with your preferences and business needs.
Any move to Government Digital Service from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at