DevOps Engineer

Location(s): London or Manchester

BAE Systems Digital Intelligence is home to 4,500 digital, cyber and intelligence experts. We work collaboratively across 10 countries to collect, connect and understand complex data, so that governments, nation states, armed forces and commercial businesses can unlock digital advantage in the most demanding environments.

Job Title: DevOps Engineer

Requistion ID: 120493

Location: London or Manchester – Hybrid working offered, with consideration for both full and part-time applicants – please speak to your recruiter about the options

Grade: GG08 – GG13

Are you passionate about working with cutting-edge technology and self-motivated to find innovative solutions to complex challenges as part of a team who help keep the UK safe? Join BAE Systems as a DevOps Engineer.

As a DevOps Engineer you provide a bridge between development, testing, network/infrastructure, operations and system administrators to facilitate efficient, continuous and high quality software delivery. The processes and tooling implemented by the DevOps Engineers enables Software Engineers to turn source code and associated artefacts into installation media and/or installed and configured environments.

You will typically combine the skills of coding or scripting and process reengineering with exemplary team working and communication skills. As a DevOps Engineer you should have a good breadth of knowledge across the disciplines of software development and how software is deployed.

You will be working in a multiple disciplined team, and require a broad range of technical and soft skills to enable the team to implement sound DevOps engineering practices and deliver value quickly and continuously. These skill are categorised into the following domains.

• Automation skills: Automation is a key skill domain for DevOps engineers, they need to be able to design, build and maintain automation solutions for building, testing, deploying application and infrastructure. Specific automation skills are:

  • Continuous Integration – Skilled in the tooling and principles of continually building, testing and integrating the software that developers produce
  • Continuous Deployment – Skilled in the automation of the deployment of the artefacts produced by the CI
  • Orchestration – Deliver solutions to orchestrate the deployment, management scaling and networking of containers
  • Workload Automation – Create solutions to automate the scheduling and scaling of application workloads
  • Cloud Management – Skilled in the design, deployment and management of Public or Private Cloud environments
  • Configuration Management – Practice good configuration and source code control of all artefacts

• Human skills: Working in a multi-disciplined team DevOps engineers need to have great communication skills.

  • Problem Solving – The DevOps engineer is often the first port of call to diagnose and resolve problems, they need to be able to understand the causes of issues across a number of domains including infrastructure, code, networking and databases with enough knowledge to be able to fault find and identify the root cause
  • Collaboration – Working within a DevOps team it is key that the DevOps engineers collaborate well with the team to ensure they are all working towards the same goal.
  • Knowledge sharing – Effectively shares knowledge within the project team and within the wider organisation.
  • Flexibility – DevOps engineers need to be flexible and quickly adapt to new situations and technology

• Technical skills: DevOps engineers need a good understanding of a vast number of technical skills, below are some of the key expected skills

  • Cloud Platforms – Should be confident with the configuration of a least one Public or Private Cloud platform
  • Operating Systems – Should be able to configure, harden and maintain at least one flavour of Operating System
  • Programming Languages – Although programming is not the core skill of the DevOps engineer, they still need to be able to program to produce the automation that is required for the role. There will also be times that an understanding of coding is needed to problem solve issues
  • Containerisation – Most DevOps projects make use of containers, DevOps engineers must be experienced with at least one containerisation platform and orchestration tool
  • Application Technologies – Although application development is not the main focus of a DevOps engineer they need a high level understanding of application development technology to enable them to build and deploy
  • Databases – Should be able to deploy and maintain different database management systems and understand enough to fault find issues
  • Legacy Infrastructures – Not all projects will use modern technology exclusively, some may deploy to or integrate with legacy infrastructure. DevOps engineers need to be able to understand the legacy technology

• Multi-discipline enabling skills: DevOps teams maintain the products they produce from development through to operations, DevOps engineers need an understanding of multiple disciplines to help the team succeed

  • IT Operations – Responsible for managing the on-going BAU support of the platform in operation environments. Including change and incident management, service requests and proactive monitoring and maintenance
  • Security – Ensure security is considered early in the development lifecycle and constantly maintained. DevOps engineers must understand how to secure the infrastructure that they deploy
  • Application Development & Delivery – To effectively work with developers in the team DevOps engineers need a good understanding of application development methods and delivery
  • Architecture – Need to be able to design and document architectures using best practice, patterns and frameworks

• Process & Framework Knowledge: DevOps teams use a number of processes and frameworks to deliver constant value, DevOps engineers need to understand these to help the team deliver

  • Agile – Should understand the Agile Manifesto and the 12 Principles and be able to work within a team using Agile methodology
  • Scrum – DevOps engineers should be an active member of the scrum team and contribute to sprint ceremonies
  • SRE – Should understand SRE principles and apply these to constantly improve the reliability and minimise the support burden within the team

Security Clearance

Due to the nature of our work, successful candidates for this role will be required to hold an active eDV before applying for this opportunity.

How we will support you

• Work-life balance is important; you can work around core hours with flexible and part-time working, and many of our roles include hybrid working enabling a mix of working from home and in the office

• You’ll get 25 days holiday a year and the option to buy/sell and carry over from the year before

• Our flexible benefits package includes private medical and dental insurance, a competitive pension scheme, cycle to work scheme, taste cards and more

• You’ll have a dedicated Career Manager to help you develop your career and guide you on your journey through BAE

• You’ll be part of our company bonus scheme

• You are welcome to join any/all of our Employee Resource groups. These groups cover everything from gender diversity to mental health and wellbeing.

About our team

Our people are what differentiates us, they are resourceful, innovative and dedicated. We have a mix of generalists and specialists and recognise that this diversity contributes to our success. We recognise the benefits of forming teams from a mix of disciplines, which allows us to come up with cutting edge, high quality solutions. Our breadth of work across the Public Sector provides diverse opportunities for our people to develop their careers in new areas of expertise and with new clients.

You’ll be part of a big company, but we try to create a culture that feels like a small one. The work will stretch you and be challenging, but we encourage a healthy work-life balance. Most of all, we know teams who work well together also perform well. We’ll do everything we can to ensure you have fun at work, and in social activities outside of it whether that’s virtually or in person, as conditions allow.

We have a rich history of working within National Security. In fact, we have over 40 years’ experience of delivering advice and solutions to our customers in this sector, supporting them in carrying out their vital missions.

Why BAE Systems? This is a place where you’ll be able to make a real difference. You’ll be part of an inclusive culture that values diversity of thought, rewards integrity, and merit, and where you’ll be empowered to fulfil your potential. We welcome people from all backgrounds and want to make sure that our recruitment processes are as inclusive as possible. If you have a disability or health condition (for example dyslexia, autism, an anxiety disorder etc.) that may affect your performance in certain assessment types, please speak to your recruiter about potential reasonable adjustments.

Please be aware that many roles at BAE Systems are subject to both security and export control restrictions. These restrictions mean that factors such as your nationality, any nationalities you may have previously held, and your place of birth can restrict the roles you are eligible to perform within the organisation. All applicants must as a minimum achieve Baseline Personnel Security Standard. Many roles also require higher levels of National Security Vetting where applicants must typically have 5 to 10 years of continuous residency in the UK depending on the vetting level required for the role, to allow for meaningful security vetting checks.

Life at BAE Systems Digital Intelligence

We are embracing Hybrid Working. This means you and your colleagues may be working in different locations, such as from home, another BAE Systems office or client site, some or all of the time, and work might be going on at different times of the day.

By embracing technology, we can interact, collaborate and create together, even when we’re working remotely from one another. Hybrid Working allows for increased flexibility in when and where we work, helping us to balance our work and personal life more effectively, and enhance well-being.

Inclusion is integral to the success of BAE Systems Digital Intelligence. We are proud to have an organisational culture where employees with varying perspectives, skills, life experiences and backgrounds – the best and brightest minds – can work together to achieve excellence and realise individual and organisational potential.

Division overview: Capabilities

At BAE Systems Digital Intelligence, we pride ourselves in being a leader in the cyber defence industry, and Capabilities is the engine that keeps the business moving forward. It is the largest area of Digital Intelligence, containing our Engineering, Consulting and Project Management teams that design and implement the defence solutions and digital transformation projects that make us a globally recognised brand in both the public and private sector.

As a member of the Capabilities team, you will be creating and managing the solutions that earn us our place in an ever changing digital world. We all have a role to play in defending our clients, and this is yours.