Development Operations (DevOps) Engineer

Farnborough, Hampshire
Part of our Development function, our DevOps Engineers maintain and improve our continuous build, test and deployment delivery system (pipeline) to meet the needs of the Software Engineering teams and release/change management. An effective pipeline enables delivery teams to rapidly and safely release software, in turn increasing the speed at which our customers and business see value.

Working within an agile environment, we’re looking for experienced DevOps Engineers who can bring something to the table, be part of a fast-paced and rapidly changing company with the customer at the centre of what we do.

Our DevOps team have started rolling out a CI leading to a CD process based on Docker containers. We put energy and investment into the tooling that makes our environments easier for our teams to use, allowing focus on the valuable software being created.

Key Responsibilities

• Working with the Development Manager, devise and maintain the UKCloud Continuous Integration Environment (CI/CD) ensuring its use and effectiveness for the consuming teams. To include all tools and environments from developer check-in to the creation of signed off builds ready to release to production
• Undertake the necessary technical work to implement, maintain and/or improve the Build Pipeline including administration of the source code repository and servers that form part of the Build Pipeline
• Production of metrics reflecting the state of UKCloud’s code base and build pipeline performance. Work with teams to understand how the build pipeline can help teams improve quality and throughput
• Provide Subject Matter Expert level code and application support when needed, including leadership of technical investigations
• Ensure effective documentation for design, configuration and on-going support of the pipeline
• Maintain a “backlog” of changes and enhancements; publish this to engineering management and engineering teams.
• Ensure Development Teams have sufficient and effective environments for coding and testing activity
• Evaluate software and services to see if they should form part of the tooling/platform in use
• Contribute to the creation of technical standards within the development team and UKCloud
• Actively coach and support the technical development of less experienced colleagues
• Maintain technical knowledge of current technical trends and standards

Skills/Experience

• You will be disciplined, organised and be highly self-motivated to achieve and deliver. With a technical mind-set, you’ll be keen to share your knowledge and work within and across teams to solve problems and automate.
• A great communicator who can take the initiative and find solutions to problems with a true customer ethos.

Essential

• In depth knowledge of implementing and/or maintaining a multi-team/multi code Continuous Integration (CI/CD) environment
• Experienced in the maintenance and administration of se-linux systems. This will include shell scripting, performance monitoring and tuning, setting up and maintaining services and installation of software
• Commercial experience of configuration management tools, ideally Puppet
• General understanding of software engineering; will have coding experience in a major programming language such as Java, C#, Python or Ruby
• Experienced with common build tools such as Git, Jenkins, ANT, Maven, Gradle
• In depth commercial experience working in agile teams and practices, e.g. Scrum and XP
• Expertise in SQL and No SQL database technologies. Be able design performant queries, appropriately normalised schemas and basic tuning against MySQL/MariaDB and/or MongoDB
• Demonstrable skill in at least one of the following scripting languages: Python, Ruby, PowerShell, Perl
• A good understanding of core datacentre technologies: Servers, Networks, Storage gained through an operational support background, ideally a large scale cloud or virtualised computing environment
• Experience working in an ITSM environment with 3rd line support teams; effective problem investigation.
• Exposure to software engineering practices either as a software engineer or QA engineer.
• Commercial experience working in agile teams and practices, e.g. Scrum and XP

Desirable

• In-depth understanding of the Atlassian Tool Stack; in particular Bamboo and BitBucket (Stash)
• Demonstrable expertise in design and implementation of testing frameworks, for example Unit Testing, BDD/TDD, Performance Testing and Security Testing (Fuzz)
• Knowledge of the principals of virtualisation with VMware or OpenStack, AWS/Azure
• Knowledge of security coding practices (OWASP and similar)

UKCloud is an equal opportunities employer and positively encourages applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates. Candidates must be eligible to work and live in the UK and will be required to undergo and maintain UK government security clearance.

To apply, please click here and send us your current CV and a covering note detailing your current salary and the reasons you wish to join us. We look forward to hearing from you.