Job title – Development/Operations (DevOps) Engineer
Grade – TBC
Location – London
Contract Type Permanent
Overview of project/role
As a DevOps Engineer, you will responsible for designing and delivering secure, highly available and scale-able cloud-based systems and services and implementing continuous integration pipelines using Infrastructure as Code techniques to build, deploy and provision these systems.
As a DevOps Engineer, you will work with inhouse development teams and third-party suppliers to optimise our development processes and identify process optimisation opportunities and contribute to the implementation of proposed solutions. You will initially work mostly with AWS & Linux developing and supporting systems and infrastructure through to production using modern continuous integration/deployment (CI/CD) techniques and supporting analysis, identification, prioritisation and implementation of incremental improvements to our services currently running.
You will be a good technical communicator, able to improve developer experience through tools and technologies in collaboration with the development teams and CoP throughout the development lifecycle to live service and decommissioning. You will maintain the security, confidentiality and integrity of our cloud services by implementing relevant information security standards and ensure compliance with relevant legislations and regulations.
Key Accountabilities
1. Lead development and rollout of a continuous integration and deployment pipeline across the GLA's Digital estate, use of containerisation techniques where appropriate, and working collaboratively with other departments
2. Support inhouse and outsourced developers, system administrators and technical architects to use DevOps approaches to design, architect, automate and implement highly available and fault-tolerant environments (staging, quality assurance, user acceptance and production), with multi-cloud capability primarily starting on AWS.
3. Work with technical colleagues to define and implement DevOps methodology using practices recommended in the GDS Service Standard. Support the team to extend our continuous integration pipeline across our digital estate.
4. Write infrastructure as code using Terraform or similar. Use cross-platform APIs and automation/deployment technologies such as Ansible or similar to orchestrate cloud platform deployment
5. Support and fix bugs in existing application deployment pipelines, using standard debugging tools to track down and identify root causes. Work independently to find solutions / identify problems and to work with inhouse Dev Ops team, Technical Architect and third-party suppliers Developers to solve more challenging issue.
6. Review existing applications, advising and supporting colleagues on configuring and converting them for deployment to the cloud or migrate from other cloud providers. Support setting up continuous integration/deployment, developing automation scripts and advising developers on adapting them to run in the cloud.
7. Working using Agile methodologies in a multidisciplinary scrum team, collaborate and liaise with delivery managers, product owners and other stakeholders to identify business requirements and implement user stories.
8. Collaborate and work with external third-party suppliers and cloud service providers to ensure they adhere to our technical standards, Dev Ops handbook and the GLA derives the maximum value from any third-party service providers and that the right knowledge is transferred in-house.
9. Continuously seek to improve your own knowledge of work areas, contributing to the Development community of practice, and embrace the agile framework of software delivery. Support colleagues to reach full agility using DevOps best practices including continuous integrations, delivery, and release.
10. Consistently work to meet project deadlines and manage time effectively to deliver projects on budget
11. Manage resources allocated to the job in accordance with the Authority's policies and Code of Ethics and Standards.
12. Realising the benefits of London's diversity by promoting and enabling equality of opportunities and promoting the diverse needs and aspirations of London's communities.
13. Realise the benefits of a flexible approach to work in undertaking the duties and responsibilities of the job, and participate in multi-disciplinary, cross-departmental and cross-organisational groups and project teams.
14. Work with members of GLA's test team to integrate automated tests into the build and deployment pipelines
15. Diagnose and resolve system problems, be responsible for systems availability requirements and plan, measure, monitor and continually improve the availability of services.
Skills, Knowledge & Experience
1. Educated to degree level in relevant subject such as computer science with core development element or equivalent level qualification or experience of working at a similar level in specialist area
2. Proficiency/experience with DevOps approaches to application testing and deployment
3. Experience of automated deployment of applications and services to AWS
4. Design, development and support of CI/CD pipelines in a microservice architecture with experience of implementing a continuous integration platform such as Jenkins using repeatable deployment patterns
5. Knowledge/experience of appropriate standards, methods and tools to design systems using DevOps principles.
6. Knowledge/experience of technologies such as Ansible, Packer, Terraform Linux, MySQL, PostgreSQL, NGINX, PHP, Drupal, Tomcat, Maven, Composer, Java.
7. Genuine passion and interest in DevOps and cloud automation technologies and version control software (Git)
8. Ability to handle multiple tasks and workloads
9. Able to identify opportunities to optimise application development/deployment and lifecycle processes and contribute to their implementation using DevOps and Agile approaches
10. Able to define the continuous integration build, co-ordinate build activities across systems and understand how to undertake and support integration testing activities
11. Able to work with inhouse and outsourced technology stakeholders to translate business problems into technical designs, specifying and designing systems using appropriate standards and tools
12. An understanding of and commitment to equality of opportunity and good working relationships, both in terms of day-to-day working practices, but also in relation to management systems
Desirable Criteria:
1. Postgraduate or professional qualification or equivalent experience in of working at a similar level in specialist area Experience with continuous integration systems (Jenkins/Travis)
2. Experience of containerisation or microservices technologies and techniques, such as Docker or Kubernetes
3. Good understanding of RESTful Web Services
4. Good understanding of user needs and the difference between user needs and desires
5. Experience of Agile principles, practices and tools such as Jira
