Senior DevOps Engineer

Description & Requirements

On behalf of DWP we are looking for a Senior DevOps Engineer for a 12 month (Inside IR35) contract. Hybrid working with up to 3 days per week in either Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds or Newcastle.

An active SC Clearance is an essential requirement for this role, as a minimum you must be willing & eligible to undergo checks. (Please note, due to the exceptional requirements of this position (short-term nature of this role and speed at which we require a postholder in situ) preference may be given to candidates who meet all of the essential criteria and hold active security clearance.)

Team Galaxy owns and runs the shared platform services that engineering teams across DWP Digital depend on to build and ship software, including GitLab, GitHub Enterprise, Nexus, vulnerability management, and the build and deploy infrastructure.

Objectives

• Keep Team Galaxy's core platforms reliable, secure, and well-maintained so that engineering teams across DWP Digital can deliver software without interruption. Automate and improve platform operations to reduce toil, lower the risk of incidents, and raise the standard of delivery across consuming teams.
• Support engineering teams in getting the most out of the tools we provide, acting as a knowledgeable and approachable point of contact through our support channel.
• Contribute to keeping the software supply chain secure through vulnerability scanning, dependency management, patching, and artifact management practices.
• Share knowledge openly through documentation, runbooks, and day-to-day collaboration.

Responsibilities

Code Storage

• Administer GitHub Enterprise and GitLab at an enterprise scale, managing repositories, groups, access controls, and integrations across a large, multi-team organisation.
• Lead and deliver repository migration work, including moving repositories from GitHub Enterprise to GitLab, managing the migration pipeline, and supporting teams through the transition.
• Design, build, and maintain GitLab CI/CD pipelines, including reusable pipeline templates and blueprints consumed by teams across DWP Digital.

Artifact Storage

• Administer Nexus Repository Manager at an enterprise scale: configure and maintain hosted, proxy, and group repositories across multiple package formats (Maven, npm, Docker, and others).
• Investigate and resolve Nexus incidents and support teams with connectivity and authentication issues.

Vulnerability Management

• Operate and develop Wiz integration for container and infrastructure vulnerability scanning across the Galaxy estate.
• Manage Renovate configuration for automated dependency updates, including automerge policies and security enforcement across consuming repositories.
• Own OS and software patching for the EC2 fleet in AWS, planning and executing patching cycles, tracking compliance, and responding to critical patch requirements.

Build and Deploy

• Build, maintain, and improve CI/CD pipelines using GitLab Pipelines and Jenkins, including shared pipeline components and reusable Terraform Blueprints.
• Manage containerised workload deployments using Docker and AWS ECS.
• Write and maintain Terraform to manage infrastructure, IAM policies, and pipeline integrations.
• Manage GitLab Runner infrastructure: registration, concurrency configuration, and patching.

Essential Skills

• Strong hands-on experience designing and building GitLab CI/CD pipelines, including reusable pipeline templates.
• Experience administering GitHub Enterprise and/or GitLab at enterprise scale. Candidates should have delivered repository migration work, ideally moving repositories from GitHub to GitLab, and be familiar with the challenges of doing this at scale across a large organisation.
• Hands-on experience administering Nexus at an enterprise level: configuring and managing repositories across multiple package formats, lifecycle policies, certificate management, and integration with CI/CD tooling.
• Experience working across build and deploy tooling. Candidates should be comfortable with at least three of: Jenkins pipeline administration, Docker container management, Terraform for infrastructure and IAM, and deploying containerised workloads to AWS ECS.
• Experience working in a large enterprise or public-sector engineering environment with many teams depending on shared infrastructure.
• Background in a platform, enablement, or infrastructure team where your customers are other engineers rather than end-users.
• Experience managing OS and software patching in AWS, including EC2 fleet patching cycles and patch compliance.

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.

Disability Confident

As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, DWP guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. This scheme encourages candidates with a disability and/or neurodivergence to apply. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

Armed Forces Covenant

DWP guarantees to interview veterans or spouses / partners of military personnel who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates / military spouses or partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following "this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different".

General information

Posting ID

PIP10790

Type of employment

Contract

Organisation

Department for Work & Pensions

Contract duration

12 Months

Location

UK Wide

Workplace Type

Hybrid