18911 - Lead Platforms Engineer
Background/Purpose
Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) is an agency of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) and provides the supporting administration for the Judiciary across England and Wales. It delivers services to the public directly in court and tribunal buildings, remotely via business and service centres and digital services online.
HMCTS is embarking on a period of significant change and this includes creating high quality digital products and services, modernising the court estate, updating and replacing its technology, speeding up and streamlining working practices, refurbishing buildings to reduce maintenance costs and provide much improved services for service users, especially vulnerable witnesses and victims.
As lead Operations Engineer you will be leading on infrastructure operations overseeing the service, contractual and regulatory requirements of the organisation.
Key responsibilities
- Manage changes to service, configuration items, organisation change, supplier change and documentation for the HMCTS cloud hosting platforms
- Leading and taking ownership of problems and proactively resolving technical problems
- Identifying operational problems by observing and studying system functioning and performance results, ensuring that HMCTS’s digital services are available, reliable and operated flexibly. Results are used by operational teams in HMCTS Digital Change to manage the live service proactively
- Managing and Coordinating responses to incident reports, ensuring relevant prioritisation and detail to allow effective investigation. These will be accountable for the live service on the HMCTS Digital Change platforms and all live operations tasks
- Requesting changes due to incident or problems to provide effective control and reduction of risk
- Leading on correct procedures or channels of development for the cloud hosting platform and implementing a DevOps operational approach in HCMTS Digital Change
- Plan, design, manage, executes and reports tests of the cloud hosting platform, ensuring HMCTS Digital Change is releasing quality products and enhancements to live service for our users
- Ensuring technical solutions continue to meet business requirements
- Understanding Users of HMCTS Digital services and identifying how the live operations function will meet their needs
- Understanding of policy, principles and approach for the cloud hosting platform, to ensure a high availability live service, enabling flexible releases
- Maintaining focus on the whole life of service delivery and the introduction of new services, through discovery, alpha, beta and live stages. Ensuring that they are operationally supported to have a high availability in live service and flexible releases are enabled
The successful candidate should be able to demonstrate the ability to:
- Has an in-depth understanding of service management framework principles and processes
- Good technical knowledge, including broad understanding of varied and complex systems built on different platforms
- Working with digital product teams in a DevOps model
- Experience of Working with digital product teams in a DevOps model
- Able to focus on delivering timely performance and takes responsibility for quality outcomes
- Hands on experience in Jenkins, Ansible, sonarQube, Github and Azure
- Excellent grasp of good problem-solving principles and logical judgement
- Experience of the principles of monitoring and interacting with a range of applications and services
- Working to agreed goals and deals with challenges in a responsive and constructive way
- Experience of working in a multidiscipline team with commercial/supplier management awareness
- Troubleshooting and diagnosing defects in complex systems
- Experience in logging and managing incident in an operational environment
- Experience applying agile techniques to continual service improvement
- Ability to communicate effectively with external providers and senior stakeholders
- Proactively manages problems which underpin service availability by employing programme, project and risk management methodologies
- Translating technical terminology and asking the right questions to find solutions
- Able to create, maintain and enhance supporting documentation for the Operations team
- Proven ability to share knowledge with team members
Desirable
Job Sharing and Reduced Hours
All applications for job sharing or reduced hours will be treated fairly and on a case by case basis in accordance with the MoJ’s flexible working policy and equality policy.
Excess Fares and Relocation Allowances
This job is not eligible for relocation allowances but excess fares may be considered in accordance with MoJ’s excess fares allowance policy.
Security Clearance
The successful candidate will be required to obtain security clearance (SC) level clearance before taking up post. Please note that individuals should normally have been resident in the UK for 5 years preceding their application for SC clearance.
Working Arrangements & Further Information
Some of MoJ’s terms and conditions of service are changing as part of Civil Service reform. The changes will apply to staff joining MoJ who are new to the Civil Service. Staff joining MoJ from other civil service employers will transfer onto the new MoJ terms if they are already on 'modernised' terms in their current post or onto 'unmodernised' MoJ terms if they are on 'unmodernised' terms at their current post. Details will be available if an offer is made.
Flexible working hours
The Ministry of Justice offers a flexible working system in many offices.
Benefits
The MoJ offers a range of benefits:
Annual Leave
Generous allowances for paid holiday starting at 25 days per year, and rising as your service increases. There is also a scheme to allow qualifying staff to buy or sell up to three days leave each year. Additional paid time off for public holidays and 1 privilege day. Leave for part-time and job share posts will be calculated on a pro-rata basis.
Pension
The Civil Service offers a choice of pension schemes, giving you the flexibility to choose the pension that suits you best.
Training
The Ministry of Justice is committed to staff development and offers an extensive range of training and development opportunities.
Support
- A range of ‘Family Friendly’ policies such as opportunities to work reduced hours or job share.
- Access to flexible benefits such as salary sacrifice arrangements for childcare vouchers, and voluntary benefits such as retail vouchers and discounts on a range of goods and services.
- Paid paternity, adoption and maternity leave.
- Free annual sight tests for employees who use computer screens.
Networks
The opportunity to join employee-run networks that have been established to provide advice and support and to enable the views of employees from minority groups to be expressed direct to senior management. There are currently networks for employees of minority ethnic origin, employees with disabilities, employees with caring responsibilities, women employees, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.
Working for the Civil Service
The Civil Service Code sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles.
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equality of opportunity.
There is a guaranteed interview scheme (GIS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
26/06/2018, 23:55 hours.
Closing Date: 26th June 2018 at 23.55 hours
If you require any assistance please call 0845 241 5359 (Monday to Friday 8am - 6pm) or e mail Moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@sscl.gse.gov.uk Please quote the job reference.
To apply for roles in MOJ you will need to confirm your employment history for at least 3 years prior to the date of application so that pre-employment checks (BPSS) can be undertaken. If you have spent significant time abroad (a total of 6 months in the past 3 years) you would be required to give a reasonable account of the reasons why.
For some roles you will be required to successfully complete National Security Vetting at Counter Terrorism (CTC), Security Clearance (SC) or Developed Vetting (DV) level as a condition of appointment. To meet CTC/SC/DV requirements you will normally need to have been resident in the UK for at least 3/5/10 years prior to the date of application (The level of checks that are required are stated in the advert).
If you do not meet the above requirements, you may still be considered if, for example:
- You've been serving overseas with HM Forces or in some other official capacity as a representative of HM Government
- You were studying abroad
- You were living overseas with parents
In such cases you will need to be able to provide referee cover for the period(s) of residence overseas. The duration of overseas residence and the country of abode will also be taken into account.
We have provided detail of the assessment stages and areas being assessed to help you prepare for completing your application form, and to advise of what will be assessed following this, if you successfully pass the application stage.
Application form stage assessments
Interview stage assessments
A Great Place to Work for Veterans
The "Making the Civil Service a Great Place to work for veterans" initiative includes a guaranteed interview scheme to those who meet the minimum criteria to provide eligible former members of the Armed Forces with opportunities to secure rewarding jobs. Allowing veterans to continue to serve their country, and to bring highly skilled individuals with a broad range of experience into the Civil Service in an environment, which recognises and values your previous service in the Armed Forces.
For further details about the initiative and eligibility requirements visit : https://www.gov.uk/government/news/making-the-civil-service-a-great-place-to-work-for-veterans
Redeployment Interview Scheme
Civil Service departments are expected to explore redeployment opportunities before making an individual redundant. The MoJ are committed, as part of the Redeployment Interview Scheme, to providing opportunities to those who are 'at risk of redundancy'.
MoJ are able to offer an interview to eligible candidates who meet the minimum selection criteria, except in a limited number of campaigns. Candidate's will not be eligible for the Redeployment Interview Scheme if they are applying on promotion.
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) (opens in a new window) https://www.gov.uk/settled-status-eu-citizens-families
· 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
Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationality-rules
This Vacancy is closed to applications.