Platform Engineer

Our Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) team develops and operates tools, services, and platforms that enable the UK government to provide world leading support to businesses in the UK and overseas.
You’ll get to constantly push boundaries in an environment free of heavy legacy, driven by curiosity, social purpose, diversity of thought, entrepreneurship, and the aspiration to offer an incredible experience to all our users. Find out more on our blog, Digital Trade.
We are on a mission to build a new cutting-edge developer platform in AWS and migrate existing DBT services from GOV.UK PaaS in the process. Are you up to the challenge of building something new? We need Site Reliability Engineers/Platform Engineers to make sure our internet services are hosted on the most performant, secure and feature rich platform to meet the developer experience., As a Platform Engineer, you will pro-actively engage development teams and use initiative to develop the tools for their job, including application performance monitoring, exception, log and metrics aggregation, dashboards, and declarative CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous delivery) pipelines.
You’ll work alongside senior members of the team to pro-actively engage product teams about service-level indicators, objectives, and error budget. You will contribute towards building and scaling our global product platform and participate in an on-call rota.
Our tech stack includes:
+ Amazon Web Services
+ Azure
+ AWS CodePipelines and AWS CodeBuild
+ Terraform & AWS Copilot (CloudFormation)
+ Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Elastic Container Registry (ECR)
+ ElasticSearch/OpenSearch
+ Python and Django framework
+ PostgreSQL as a service (Amazon RDS)
+ Sentry
+ Redis/Elasticache, Sift will be from week commencing Monday 20th May 2024
Interviews will be from week commencing Tuesday 28th May 2024
Please note these dates are indicative and may be subject to change.
If there is a high volume of applications, we will sift looking at your CV only. You may then be progressed to full sift or straight to interview.
How we interview
At the interview stage for this role, you will be asked to demonstrate relevant Technical Skills and Behaviours from the Success Profiles framework. These are role specific and in line with the DDaT Capability Framework.
Technical Skills
+ Availability and capacity management
+ Development process optimisations
+ Information security
+ Modern standards approach
+ Programming and build (software engineering)
+ Prototyping
+ Systems integration
+ User focus
Behaviours
+ Communicating and Influencing
You will also be asked to undergo a live technical test and will be informed on the topic following the sift/ on the day.
How we offer
Offers may be made in merit order based on location preferences. If you pass the bar at interview but are not the highest scoring you will be held on a 12-month reserve list in case a role becomes available. If you are judged a near miss at interview, you may be offered a post at the grade below the one you applied for.
This role requires SC clearance. DBT’s requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years. Failure to meet this requirement will result in your application being rejected and your offer will be withdrawn.
Checks will also be made against:
+ Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
+ UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
+ Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency

It is essential that you have:
+ Cloud experience with either Amazon Web Services, Azure or Google Cloud.
+ Exposure to building code-defined and reliable infrastructure on top of cloud computing systems (e.g., AWS Copilot, Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi).
+ Working knowledge in one or more programming languages, writing clean and effective code.
+ Knowledge of Linux/Unix fundamentals and TCP/IP networking.
+ Ability to see user impact in the infrastructure and platform changes, including a drive to improve the Developer Experience at every turn
It is desirable that you have:
+ Experience in observability driven development.
+ Experience in prototyping through reuse of existing Open Source components.

The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) is the department for economic growth. The Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) directorate develops and operates tools and services to support businesses to invest, grow and export, creating jobs and opportunities across the country.

Alongside your salary of £39,600, Department for Business and Trade contributes £10,692 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
+ Learning and development tailored to your role
+ An environment with flexible working options
+ A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
+ A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%, If you join us, you will get:
+ Learning and development tailored to your role
+ A flexible, hybrid working environment with options like condensed hours
+ A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
+ A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%
+ Annual leave starting at 25 days rising to 30 days with service
+ Three paid volunteering days a year
+ An employee benefits program including cycle to work
More about us
This role can only be worked from within the UK, not overseas. If you are based in London, you will receive London weighting. DBT employees work in a hybrid pattern, spending 2-3 days a week (pro rata) in the office on average. Travel to your primary office location will not be paid for by DBT, but costs for travel to an office which is not your main location will be covered.
You can find out more about our office locations, how we calculate salaries, our diversity statement and reasonable adjustments, the Recruitment Principles, the Civil Service code and our complaints procedure on our website.
Find out more about life at DBT, our benefits and meet the team by watching our video or reading our blog!
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements
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)
+ 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)

Working for the Civil Service
The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) 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 (opens in a new window).
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.