Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer (ID: jiUZsCIK)

We are looking for a Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer to join our dynamic team and drive our infrastructure to the next level.

The National Archives Digital Directorate is committed to delivering high-quality, innovative, accessible, and user-centred digital services for a diverse audience. The Digital Archiving and Digital Services teams work together to improve the flow of digital records into the archive, open up access to this nationally important resource and preserve it for future generations. Our teams embrace challenges and look for opportunities to do things differently.

Join our creative and motivated digital team at The National Archives, one of the world's leading digital archives. Help us deliver high-quality, innovative, accessible, and user-centred digital services for a diverse audience.

Our team comprises talented individuals who are passionate about technology and committed to excellence.

As a Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at The National Archives, you will be responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining infrastructure that supports our software development and deployment processes which resides mainly in AWS. You will work closely with software developers, system operators and other IT staff members across the organisation to manage code releases and ensure efficient, reliable operations. Your expertise will be crucial in automating our infrastructure, enhancing our CI/CD pipelines, and ensuring the security, stability and scalability of our systems and data.

This is a full-time post. A combination of onsite and home working is available and applicants should be able to regularly travel to our Kew site for a minimum of 60% of their work time.

SC-level security clearance or willingness to obtain SC clearance is mandatory for this role and requires that you have lived in the UK for the last 3 years.

HOW TO APPLY:

To submit your application please click the 'Apply' button on this page. You will be asked to upload your CV.
You will be assessed against the first 6 essential criteria listed in the Person Specification section below.
Other essential criteria will be assessed at the interview stage.

Job description:

As a Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, you'll design, implement, optimise, support and maintain our cloud-based systems, ensuring they are secure, resilient, and scalable.

In this role, you will collaborate closely with technical architects, software developers, data engineers, and experts from across the organization to ensure that our cloud services are robust, performant, and well-managed. You will have the opportunity to rapidly develop your own expertise while helping us grow our AWS capability, skills, and culture in an open and collaborative environment. There will be scope to engage widely with internal and external communities to share your knowledge and learn from others.

Role and Responsibilities:

Working as a Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at The National Archives you will:

• Work effectively in a multidisciplinary, user-centred, agile environment, bringing a depth of DevOps skills and awareness to define, build and maintain secure services from development through to production.
• Engineer for reliability, maintainability, performance and security, playing a key role in designing user-focused systems, diagnosing service issues and devising and implementing enhancements to application infrastructure and tooling.
• Manage and maintain relationships with suppliers ensuring delivery of services to agreed standards and negotiate services as required.
• Have solid experience with AWS Cloud hosting services, platforms and tooling such as EKS, ECR, RDS, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, etc.
• Work with the wider DevOps community to enhance and improve patterns and frameworks whilst supporting existing and building new CI/CD pipelines.
• Take a lead role in the implementation of solutions and technical direction of our platforms to optimise security, service quality and resilience whilst maintaining a consistent and flexible approach across all our digital services/products.
• Proactively engage with stakeholders, and contribute to creating and supporting communities of practice, including coaching and mentoring less experienced colleagues, championing and promoting improvements, and providing leadership, guidance, support and advice.
• Collaborate with Service owners to identify infrastructure enhancements, which support operational or project goals. Manage your own workload to plan, test and implement changes within delivery cycles, ensuring that your work is of the highest standard.
• Represent The National Archives externally and maintain a keen interest in relevant digital, data and technology to promote the adoption of beneficial standards and practices.

Person specification:

Essential:

1. Solid knowledge of AWS (platform, products and services) with a track record of providing technical leadership in conceptualising and delivering projects through the entire development lifecycle and organising your workload to fit into active sprints.
2. Significant experience of an ‘infrastructure as code’ approach using tools such as Terraform.
3. Demonstrable experience in CI/CD pipelines including planning, designing, testing, building and maintaining.
4. Hands-on experience in engineering and maintaining DevOps toolchains to support secure and highly resilient services using DevOps principles and processes.
5. Strong skills in coding or scripting (in a major programming/scripting language) to provide automation and consistent deployment patterns with knowledge of TDD (Test Driven Development) and Source Control.
6. Experience working in multidisciplinary teams using agile and user-centred methodologies, including iterative design, planning and improvement with a good understanding of accessibility requirements.

Proactivity and enthusiasm about developing your own knowledge and sharing knowledge to build an open, collaborative community, mentor junior colleagues and engage with the wider organisation, third-party suppliers and cross-government channels to gain insight and share experiences.

Excellent interpersonal, verbal and written communication skills; proven ability to provide technical assurance to projects and developments; communicating technical issues clearly and concisely to both technical and non-expert audiences and building effective working relationships with peers and third-party suppliers producing clear and accurate documentation.

Desirable:

Experience of the following or a commitment to develop skills in these technologies:

• Project management tools such as Jira.
• Version control with Git and GitHub.
• GitHub Actions
• Experience working with Content Management Systems such as WordPress, Wagtail or equivalent.
• Scripting for Linux and Windows platforms.
• Database Administration
• Experience of working in or with relevant sector(s) (government, archives, information services, culture and heritage).

Benefits:

Alongside your salary of £60,000, The National Archives contributes £17,382 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
Generous benefits package, including pension, sports and social club facilities, onsite gym, discounted rates at our on-site cafe and opportunities for training and development.

Any move to The National Archives 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 https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk;

Things you need to know

Selection process details

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 a security check.
• People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard checks.

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Working for the Civil Service:

The Civil Service Code sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

• We recruit by merit based on fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles
• The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
• The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion:

The Civil Service is committed to attracting, retaining and investing in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans initiative.