Head of Platform Engineering

Department for Energy Security & Net Zero

Apply before 11:55 pm on Monday 12th August 2024

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Details

Reference number

363236

Salary

£64,350 - £79,030

National: £64,350 - £74,080 London: £70,550 - £79,030 (pro-rata for part-time hours) This vacancy is being offered on the DDaT Pay Framework and can include an allowance of up to £13,350 depending on skills, qualifications, and experience. Further details on the framework can be found on https://ddat-capability-framework.service.gov.uk/role/development-operations-devops-engineer#principal-devops-engineer---management

A Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 27%

Job grade

Grade 6

Contract type

Permanent

Business area

DESNZ - Integrated Corporate Services - Digital

Type of role

Digital
Information Technology

Working pattern

Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time

Number of jobs available

1

Contents

• Location
• About the job
• Benefits
• Things you need to know
• Apply and further information

Location

Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, London, Salford

About the job

Job summary

The Integrated Corporate Services (ICS) is a new shared corporate service, launched in July 2023. It provides corporate services (HR, Finance, Digital, Commercial, Security and Estates) across the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (DESNZ) and the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT).  

Our team of just over 300 professionals will be leading the way in how these functions will be delivered in the future. Our ambition is to be the leading provider of integrated corporate services for government and set the standard for quality, efficiency, and innovation in our field. 

We offer great working benefits including a world-class pension, flexible working options and a career where your learning and development is taken seriously. We are enormously proud to be a Disability Confident Leader employer. We support candidates with adjustments throughout our recruitment process. Information about disability confidence and just some examples of the adjustments that you can request can be found in the reasonable adjustment section below.  

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is 

found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service D&I Strategy. 

Find Out More 

You can also follow our LinkedIn Careers Page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/desnz-careers/  

Job description

Join ICS Digital, where innovation meets expertise to create digital solutions. We are a cohesive digital community who work in the open, solving problems together and fostering a culture of transparency and collaboration. Our commitment to user-focused design and data-driven decision-making ensures that we deliver accessible services tailored to the needs of our customers.

ICS Digital provides a number of hosting platforms and cloud-based services to support the wider department as the Head of Platform Engineering, you will play a crucial role in leading and managing the development and operation of our Enterprise Hosting Platforms made up of both AWS and Azure. You will lead on the development and encourage uptake of our platform tooling solution developed upon AWS to support developers with delivering innovative solutions at pace, you will expand the tooling platform to support Azure and work towards reducing the number of cloud hosting platforms and services to build a reliable service offering for the department

You will provide leadership, strategic vision and management of an expanding team of technical engineering specialists. You will be responsible for the day to management of a team of circa eight platform engineers and platform developers. You will work closely with the Head of Architecture/Cyber and our ICS Digital Delivery colleagues.

Visit our blog to learn more about us and our work: https://icsdigital.blog.gov.uk/

Person specification

Key responsibilities

• Develop strategic and tactical engineering roadmaps for technologies and services in your area of responsibility, ensuring they’re future-proofed and derives maximum value from investment in technologies.
• Work with technical architects to translate the architectural designs into operations and support them in operationalising the designs.
• Lead, direct and maintain the capability of infrastructure specialist teams in building, managing, supporting and maintaining solutions according to policy.
• Supporting integrations with other products and new services into production.
• Review current implementation plans, ways of working and identify improvements.

Skills and experience

• Experience as an Infrastructure Engineer or similar role showing Technical Proficiency in cloud technologies such as AWS & Azure.
• Extensive experience of building, maintaining and deploying enterprise monitoring and alerting tooling across complex environments.
• Senior leadership skills.
• Experience developing strategic and tactical engineering roadmaps for technologies and services and can identify, test, and champion the adoption of emerging technologies.
• Managing operational relationships between internal stakeholder and critical third-party suppliers and align services to best practices and regulatory requirements.

It is unusual that candidates will meet all of the desirable criteria. If your skills and experience look slightly different from what we have identified and you think you can bring value to the Head of Platform Engineering role and the team, we strongly encourage you to apply. We'd love to hear from you!

Please, no recruitment agencies.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Communicating and Influencing
• Developing Self and Others

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Enterprise IT Governance - https://sfia-online.org/en/sfia-8/skills/governance
• System Design - https://ddat-capability-framework.service.gov.uk/skills#systems-design
• IT Infrastructure ITOP - https://sfia-online.org/en/sfia-8/skills/it-infrastructure

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £64,350, Department for Energy Security & Net Zero contributes £17,374 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero offers a competitive mix of benefits including:

• A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
• Automatic enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme, with an average employer contribution of 27%.
• A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
• An extensive range of learning & professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
• Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.
• This vacancy is being offered on the DDaT Pay Framework and can include an allowance of up to £13,350 depending on skills, qualifications, and experience. Further details on the framework can be found on https://ddat-capability-framework.service.gov.uk/role/development-operations-devops-engineer#principal-devops-engineer---management.

Office attendance

The Department operates a discretionary hybrid working policy, which provides for a combination of working hours from your place of work and from your home in the UK. The current expectation for staff is to attend the office or non-home based location for 40-60% of the time over the accounting period.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a CV and personal statement. Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

Please use your personal statement (in no more than 500 words) to describe how you address the skills and experience outlined in the job advert.

In the event of a large number of applicants, applications will be sifted on the personal statement. Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to assessment/interview.

The interview will consist of behaviour and technical questions. 

Sift and interview dates

Expected Timeline subject to change

Sift dates: w/c 12/08/2024

Interview dates: w/c 26/08/2024

Interview Location: MS Teams.

Candidates are asked to note the above timetable, exercising flexibility through the recruitment and selection process.

Reasonable Adjustment

We are proud to be a disability confident leader and we welcome applications from disabled candidates and candidates with long-term conditions.

We fully support adjustments throughout our recruitment process and we encourage candidates to discuss their adjustment needs by emailing the job contact which can be found under the contact point for applicants section.

We do not have an exhaustive list of adjustments that we support but just some examples include additional time to complete your application form, behaviour questions up to 72 hours prior to interview and having extra time at interview. 

If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section.

Further Information

If successful and transferring from another Government Department a criminal record check may be carried out.

New entrants are expected to join on the minimum of the pay band.

A location based reserve list of successful candidates will be kept for 12 months. Should another role become available within that period you may be offered this position.

Please note terms and conditions are attached. Please take time to read the document to determine how these may affect you.

Any move to the Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero  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 https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk

DESNZ does not normally offer full home working (i.e. working at home); but we do offer a variety of flexible working options (including occasionally working from home). 

DESNZ cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign. DESNZ holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not qualify.

In order to process applications without delay, we will be sending a Criminal Record Check to Disclosure and Barring Service /Disclosure Scotland on your behalf.

However, we recognise in exceptional circumstances some candidates will want to send their completed forms direct. If you will be doing this, please advise Government Recruitment Service of your intention by emailing Pre-EmploymentChecks.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk stating the job reference number in the subject heading. 

For further information on the Disclosure Scotland confidential checking service telephone: the Disclosure Scotland Helpline on 0870 609 6006 and ask to speak to the operations manager in confidence, or email Info@disclosurescotland.co.uk

For further information on National Security Vetting please visit the following page https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/demystifying-vetting

Please be aware the levels of national security clearance are changing which may impact on the level needed for this role by the time of appointment. All efforts will be made to keep candidates informed of any changes and what that will mean in terms of vetting criteria. For more information please See our vetting charter

Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant’s details held on the IFD will be refused employment. 

A candidate is not eligible to apply for a role within the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5 year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government.

Feedback

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).

People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.