About this role
Salary: £74,600 - 74,600 per year
Requirements
- We require substantial experience leading DevOps or platform engineering practices in complex software delivery environments.
- We require practical experience designing and improving CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and reusable engineering patterns, templates, or guardrails.
- We require experience with source control and delivery platforms, particularly GitHub, GitHub Actions, and Azure DevOps.
- We require experience deploying cloud-hosted applications and practical knowledge of containerisation and orchestration using AKS/Kubernetes.
- We require experience with infrastructure as code using Terraform and embedding security and quality controls into automated delivery pipelines.
- We require the ability to troubleshoot complex deployment and operational problems across applications, pipelines, and infrastructure.
- We require credible technical leadership, hands-on experience with code, scripts, configuration, and automation, and the ability to coach engineers across disciplines.
- We require an understanding of embedding security, quality, and compliance checks into the software delivery lifecycle, including code analysis, dependency and vulnerability scanning, and secrets management.
- Desirable experience includes Microsoft Azure, Azure Kubernetes Service, Helm, container registries, and cloud-native deployment patterns.
- Relevant professional certifications, such as Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104), DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400), or Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500/SC-500), are desirable.
- Desirable experience includes observability, resilient Azure services, secure networking, ingress and egress, multi-region services, incident response, and production-readiness practices.
- Experience with GitOps or progressive deployment tools such as Argo CD or Flux is desirable.
- Knowledge of policy-as-code and automated governance using tools such as Azure Policy is desirable.
- We require the successful candidate to be aged 16 or over when starting and to meet the roles Security Check clearance and residency requirements.
- We cannot offer visa sponsorship. Candidates must meet applicable UK immigration and nationality requirements.
- The role includes direct line management responsibilities.
Responsibilities
- We expect you to provide technical leadership for DevOps and DevSecOps across CPS, setting standards, reusable patterns, and practical guardrails while remaining hands-on where needed.
- You will assess emerging technologies and prioritise improvements that support organisational goals and team needs.
- You will design, improve, and maintain CI/CD pipelines, release automation, and deployment approaches so teams can build, test, and deploy services safely, consistently, and at pace.
- You will embed security, quality, compliance, and auditability into the software delivery lifecycle through automated controls, including code quality, dependency, vulnerability, and software supply chain checks.
- You will improve developer experience and operational readiness through infrastructure as code, containerisation, self-service tooling, observability, deployment diagnostics, and resilient production patterns.
- You will shape and evolve the DevOps and platform engineering roadmap, research and pilot emerging tools and practices, assess them against our existing stack, and build adoption cases that consider migration effort and long-term maintenance.
- You will coach engineers and work with software engineering, cloud infrastructure, architecture, cyber security, and suppliers to resolve complex delivery problems and drive measurable continuous improvement.
Technologies
- Azure
- CI/CD
- Cloud
- DevSecOps
- DevOps
- GitHub
- GitOps
- Helm
- Support
- Kubernetes
- Security
- Terraform
- Docker
- Kustomize
- Prometheus
More
We are the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), a Civil Service organisation serving England and Wales. This permanent Grade 7 Lead DevOps Engineer role sits within our HQ Digital Information Directorate. It can be based at a CPS office anywhere in England and Wales, with travel to CPS locations as business needs require. The post is full-time, with consideration for flexible working, part-time hours, or job sharing, and follows a hybrid policy requiring at least 40% of contracted hours over a four-week period at an official workplace. The salary is £60,390–£69,510 nationally or £64,880–£74,600 in London, with a £3,150 London RRA; the Civil Service pension has an employer contribution of up to 28.97%.
Benefits include 25 days annual leave, rising to 30 after five years, an annual personal development allowance, an additional privilege day, flexible and family-friendly working, and wellbeing and development support. We are committed to inclusion and offer reasonable adjustments. Recruitment includes an online application, assessment, and interview; interviews are expected on 10 and 11 December 2026. The anticipated start date is approximately 8–12 weeks after the application closing date.
last updated 46 week of 2026