OFG1038 – Senior DevOps Engineer

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About us

Ofgem is Great Britain’s gas and electricity regulator. Our goal is to protect

energy customers’ interests, now and in the future. We make sure competition encourages great customer service and bears down on companies’ prices and profits. We do this by scrutinising costs and checking that companies stick to the

rules we set. If a company falls short, we act. Since 2010, we’ve imposed over £100 million in fines.

We also control the revenue that network companies earn from running gas and

electricity grids. This way we make sure customers get value for money from a £6 billion a year programme to upgrade Britain’s networks.

And we are planning for the future too, with the rollout of smart metering over the next few years, and looking ahead to make sure there’s enough capacity in

the system to meet demand. About a third of our staff work in Ofgem E-Serve, a division that runs

government environmental and social schemes. These include the Energy Companies Obligation, the Domestic and Non-Domestic Renewable Heat

Incentives, the Renewables Obligation, the Feed-In Tariff scheme, and the Climate Change Levy exemption. The total value of these schemes is approximately £6 billion per year; our costs for administering them are just

0.6% of this.

We are a diverse and vibrant organisation, with the majority of our staff working in our London (Canary Wharf) and Glasgow offices. You can find the Ofgem structure chart here.

We aim to attract, support, retain and motivate our staff by making sure that

they have the skills and knowledge to perform their roles effectively and provide them with development opportunities to build a career.

We offer a variety of development including formal training, on-the-job training and coaching. There is also a comprehensive management development

programme and support for further education and professional qualifications. Ofgem is a great place to work, and we hope to be welcoming you soon.

Dermot Nolan

Chief Executive

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Ofgem Privacy Notice

Registration on Ofgem Recruitment Portal

When you register on the Ofgem Recruitment Portal your personal data and information about any applications you have made, will be collected and stored on the platform in order for you to access your details and simplify the

recruitment application process.

How Ofgem will handle your data and job applications

As part of our external recruitment process, personal information will be

collected and only used to process the application and monitor recruitment

statistics.

Where we want to disclose information to any other third parties (for example

where we want to take up a reference or obtain a ‘disclosure’ from either CIFAS,

the Disclosure and Barring Service or Disclosure Scotland), we will not do so

without informing you beforehand unless the disclosure is required by law.

Personal information about unsuccessful candidates will be held on file for six

months. After the recruitment exercise has been completed, it will then be

destroyed or deleted. We retain personalised statistical information about

applicants to help inform our recruitment activities, but this is only available to

HR.

Full details of the Ofgem Privacy Policy and how your data is used can be found

at https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/privacy-policy

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Your data when applying for open vacancies

Each time you submit an application the data that we collect will be stored and

utilised in line with the Ofgem Privacy Policy, as outlined above.

Your rights to have your data removed and/or destroyed

All candidates have the right to have their data deleted at any point and this can

be done by emailing recruitment@ofgem.gov.uk

Your Consent and confirmation

By submitting an application, you are consenting to us using, and storing your

data, as outlined in this Privacy Notice, full details can be found in the Ofgem

Privacy policy as outlined above.

If you have any concerns you can view the Civil Service Privacy Statement by

clicking here.

This privacy policy will be kept under regular review.

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Role Profile

Role details

Role Title Senior DevOps Engineer

Band Band D

Division and Directorate Corporate, Data Services

Location London / Glasgow

Number of positions and

contract type

Full Time

Purpose

The Ofgem DevOps Engineering and technical community

The role holder will join Ofgem’s community of DevOps Engineers who work across Ofgem

supporting its projects, technical platforms and business as usual responsibilities as they work to

service the needs of stakeholders external to the regulator.

Ofgem’s DevOps Engineers are capable of supporting a wide range of technical infrastructure needs.

They work together as a cohesive community who ensure coordination of delivery across Ofgem as

an enterprise. They share their experiences and expertise, learning from one another and

continuously improving best practices.

The Role

You will be responsible for the configuration and on-going management of Ofgem’s cloud PaaS/IaaS,

working with platforms such as Hortonworks based on Hadoop clusters configured on cloud data

centres such as those of Azure/AWS. You will ensure availability of the platform to services teams

and their service users. You will also carry out continuous improvements to platforms, including

system development, processes design and automation and diagnostics improvements. Assurance of

platform security, privacy and resilience will be your greatest concern.

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You will be able to draw on your experiences to engage in discussion with the technical design lead

and other technical staff recommending options for implementing technical infrastructure and data

products in a way that meets security and privacy corporate responsibilities.

You will work as part of multidisciplinary teams, adopting our agile approach to delivery. You will be

supportive of open and inclusive discussions about how to deliver the business’ technical needs. You

will seek to maximise knowledge retention and transfer, preferring off the shelf solutions to delivery.

You will continually be seeking to innovate better practices to delivery ensuring that services can

continue to deliver value to energy consumers on a sustainable basis.

Key responsibilities

Collaborating with teams who are provisioning infrastructure in a DevOps environment

Ensure principles of privacy, security and resilience are assessed and designed into solutions

Responsible for implementation and on-going administration of Hadoop infrastructure

Building and supporting the technical stack

Evaluating technology for use in the stack

Integrating technology to provide an end to end architecture

Aligning with the systems engineering team to propose and deploy new hardware and software environments required for Hadoop and to expand existing environments

Working with delivery teams to setup new Hadoop users, including setting up Linux users, Kerberos principles and testing HDFS and Hive access for new users

Monitor Hadoop cluster connectivity and security

Working with the infrastructure, network, database, application and business intelligence teams to guarantee high data quality and availability

Key outputs and deliverable

Support and maintain the service infrastructure with appropriate security and privacy controls and meets users’ needs

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Business solutions comply with privacy and security requirements

Work in an agile way, collaborating with colleagues

Provide advice and assurance about the work of junior colleagues

Deliver new functionality to service platforms, with an emphasis on platform independence, automation and cost-benefit optimisation

Provide documentation and training material to ensure knowledge retention

Ensure that governance rules, particularly security standards are always upheld

Key stakeholder relationships

The service technical leads and infrastructure engineers, who you will work with to determine and deliver platform technology strategies

The Data privacy and information security teams, and assure requirements are identified and addressed. Creating processes, automated tools and technical tools, protect and assure services

The service operational teams, who you will work with closely as you enable them to carry out their responsibilities on the platforms

The service business leads, who you will support as they make prioritisation decisions

The wider DevOps community at Ofgem

Specific skills and capabilities

Essential:

Commercial Hadoop experience using Hortonworks (preferred) or Cloudera and be able to hit the ground running to meet project deadlines

Experienced with security controls i.e. VPNs, encryption & key/certificate management, endpoint protection, virtual firewalls/ACLs/NSGs, setting up bastion nodes, etc)

Experienced connecting cloud infrastructure to on-prem networks (VPNs, tunnelling, AD connectors, routing)

Experience in architecture/engineering of cloud based distribution systems

Background in Distributed Systems, Databases, Security, Networking & Load Balancing, Monitoring, Scripting & Automation

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Technical skills across the Hadoop ecosystem - Hadoop, Hive, Ambari, Sqoop, Oozie, SPARK, Atlas, Ranger, HBase, HDFS and YARN

Agile software engineering practices such as CI/CT/CD

General operational expertise such as good troubleshooting skills, understanding of system’s capacity, bottlenecks, basics of memory, CPU, OS, storage, and networks

General Linux system administration: configuration, installs, automation, and monitoring

Knowledge of cloud computing infrastructure (eg Azure)

Experience in automating infrastructure, and software delivery to production with high quality and familiarity with open source configuration management and deployment tools such as Ansible and Terraform

A team player, fanatical about technology and an excellent communicator

Knowledge of network protocols such as TCP, UDP, HTTP/HTTPS, SSL/TLS, and Security API's.

In-depth, hands on experience of at least one major cloud (AWS, Azure etc…)

Successfully implement solutions to meet legal/regulatory requirements. i.e. DPA, ISO27001, etc.

Working experience in authentication technologies. i.e. LDAP, OAuth, 2FA, SAML, and SSO.

A deep understanding of distributed system design and dependency management

A strong grasp of monitoring tools, approach and implementation

Desirable:

Experience in the delivery of solutions capable of: o being certified to an information security standard such as ISO27001 or equivalent o holding UK Government OFFICIAL or commercially sensitive information o meeting legal and regulatory requirements such as DPA or GDPR

Knowledge of a current BI tools and reporting software would be a great advantage (eg Cognos, Qlikview, Pentaho, Tableau, etc)

Government Digital Service (GDS) Digital by Default (DbD) service delivery

Working knowledge of the 14 Cloud Security Principles and 10 Steps to Cyber Security

Civil Service Competencies

Changing and Improving

Collaborating and Partnering

Delivering Value for Money

Managing a Quality Service

Delivering at Pace

Building Capability for All

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How to apply

To apply for this role, you are required to submit a CV and Suitability Statement.

Completed applications should be submitted by midnight on the closing date.

Applications received after that time will not normally be considered. Your

application should consist of:

CV (saved as forename. surname CV)

Suitability Statement

As part of your application process, we will check your details against CIFAS

fraud prevention databases.

Should our investigations identify fraud or the commission of any other criminal

offences by you when applying for, or during the course of your employment

with us, we will record the details of this on the relevant fraud prevention

databases. This information may be accessed from the UK and other countries

and used by law enforcement agencies and by us and other organisations to

prevent fraud.

Further details of the CIFAS fraud prevention databases, through which we share

information, can be obtained by contacting recruitment@ofgem.gov.uk

Your details will also be checked against the Civil Service Internal Fraud

Database (IFD) of employees dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. Where an applicant to Ofgem is successful in interview, we will check your name and date of birth against the IFD. Any applicant who is included in the IFD will be

refused employment.

This information will be retained by the Cabinet Office on the IFD for a period of

five years from the date of dismissal (or the date employment ended). GRS and

other recruitment teams will share with the Cabinet Office the outcome of the

checks for monitoring and analysis purposes. The Cabinet Office will use this

information for research on the prevention and detection of fraud. This will not

be shared outside Cabinet Office, GRS, and other recruitment teams, except on

an anonymised basis.

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Overview of process

Your completed application will be acknowledged and you will be notified of the

outcome of the application.

Your invitation to interview correspondence will give details of specific date and

time. We will also notify you of any presentations / tests etc (not all roles require

this). The interview will be a combination of competency questions and role

specific questions. Please see the competency framework below relevant to this

role.

Please note, Ofgem do not cover the cost of travel to and from your interview.

Competencies

You will be assessed against a selection of the Band D Competencies at

interview stage. These are specified in the role profile.

The competencies can be found here. Please ensure you download and keep this

document in preparation for your potential interview.

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Terms and conditions

Role Title Senior DevOps Engineer

Salary Glasgow: £ £52,600 - £76,800 or

London, Canary Wharf: £ £56,650 - £83640

Location Glasgow/London

Hours of work London: 36 hours per week

Glasgow: 37 hours per week

Annual leave entitlement

As a new starter you are entitled to 25 days annual leave which will rise to 30 days after 2

years’ service. If you are transferring from another Government Department, and have 2 years continuous service your annual leave

will be 30 days on joining.

You will also receive 10.5 days public, Bank and privilege holiday. Please note the dates

vary in England, Wales and Scotland.

If your appointment is for less than a year then you will receive a pro-rata and

public/privilege allowance.

Pension The civil service offers excellent pension

arrangements. For further information, please visit: http://www.civilservicepensionscheme.org.uk/

Other benefits Cycle to work Childcare vouchers

Season ticket loan Employee wellbeing

Enhanced maternity /paternity pay Subsidised Gym

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Our values

Making a positive difference for energy consumers

Our priority is to protect and to make a positive difference for all energy

consumers. We work to promote value for money, security of supply and sustainability for present and future generations. We do this through the supervision and development of markets, regulation and the delivery of

government schemes.

We work effectively with, but independently of, government, the energy industry and other stakeholders. We do so within a legal framework determined by the

UK government and the European Union.

Our values are:

Dedication

Committed to making a positive difference for all energy consumers today and for a sustainable future

Making time to hear and understand views and be open to new ideas Being experts in our field - learning from everything we do – developing

our skills

Integrity

Acting with independence Being transparent and straightforward in our dealings with each other and

our stakeholders Basing our decisions on the best available evidence and impartial

assessment

Determination

Finding a way to make things happen

To deliver - focusing on the consumer outcome, working collaboratively with each other, and in partnership with stakeholders

Thinking ahead, and leading thinking

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Equalities and diversity

As an employer we are committed to equality. We want to be an organisation

that people are proud to be part of. We welcome applications from all people across all sections of our diverse communities.

We aim to ensure equality of opportunity in our employment practice and processes. This is irrespective of disability, gender, age, marital status, sexual

orientation, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origins, religion or religious affiliation, working pattern and responsibility for dependents.

We believe that every employee should be treated with openness, honesty and respect. We won’t tolerate unfair treatment or discrimination. We aim to have a

workforce that reflects the diverse community that we serve. We value and make the best use of this diversity of talent, so that our people fulfil their potential and create the conditions for business success.