Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer

As the living, growing home of our national story, The National Archives is already a special place to work. We’re an institution nearly 200 years old with a collection spanning 1,000 years of history. But it’s where we go next that makes things really interesting.

In our strategic vision: Archives for Everyone, we set ourselves the challenge of becoming the 21st Century national archive - a different kind of cultural and heritage institution: Inclusive, Entrepreneurial, Disruptive. We won’t become this overnight. It will take time, focus, effort and daring.

That’s where you come in. Because we can’t do this without you.

Job Overview

Salary: £52,900 plus an additional market supplement of £7,100 per annum

Contract type: Permanent

Band: F /Senior Executive Officer

Closing date: Wednesday 25th September 2024

We are looking for a Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer to join our dynamic team and drive our infrastructure to the next level.

As a Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at The National Archives, you will be responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining infrastructure that supports our software development and deployment processes which resides mainly in AWS. You will work closely with software developers, system operators and other IT staff members across the organisation to manage code releases and ensure efficient, reliable operations. Your expertise will be crucial in automating our infrastructure, enhancing our CI/CD pipelines, and ensuring the security, stability and scalability of our systems and data.

This is a full time post. A combination of onsite and home working is available and applicants should be able to regularly travel to our Kew site for a minimum of 60% of their work time.

SC-level security clearance or willingness to obtain SC clearance is mandatory for this role and requires that you have lived in the UK for the last 3 years.

Job Description

The National Archives Digital Directorate is committed to delivering high-quality, innovative, accessible, and user-centred digital services for a diverse audience. The Digital Archiving and Digital Services teams work together to improve the flow of digital records into the archive, open up access to this nationally important resource and preserve it for future generations.

As a Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, you'll design, implement, optimise, support and maintain our cloud-based systems, ensuring they are secure, resilient, and scalable.

Role and Responsibilities

Working as a Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at The National Archives you will:

• Work effectively in a multidisciplinary, user centered, agile environment, bringing a depth of DevOps skills and awareness to define, build and maintain secure services from development through to production.
• Engineer for reliability, maintainability, performance and security, playing a key role in designing user focused systems, diagnosing service issues and devising and implementing enhancements to application infrastructure and tooling.
• Manage and maintain relationships with suppliers ensuring delivery of services to agreed standards and negotiate services as required.
• Have solid experience of AWS Cloud hosting services, platforms and tooling such as EKS, ECR, RDS, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, etc.
• Work with the wider DevOps community to enhance and improve patterns and frameworks whilst supporting existing and building new CI/CD pipelines.
• Take a lead role in the implementation of solutions and technical direction of our platforms to optimise security, service quality and resilience whilst maintaining a consistent and flexible approach across all our digital services/products.
• Proactively engage with stakeholders, contribute to creating and supporting communities of practice, including coaching and mentoring less experienced colleagues, championing and promoting improvements, providing leadership, guidance, support and advice.
• Collaborate with Service owners to identify infrastructure enhancements, which support operational or project goals. Manage your own workload to plan, test and implement changes within delivery cycles, ensuring that your work is of the highest standard.
• Represent The National Archives externally and maintain a keen interest in relevant digital, data and technology to promote the adoption of beneficial standards and practices.

Person Specification

Essential:

• Solid knowledge of AWS (platform, products and services) with a track record of providing technical leadership in conceptualising and delivering projects through the entire development lifecycle and organising your workload to fit into active sprints.
• Significant experience of an ‘infrastructure as code’ approach using tools such as Terraform.
• Demonstrable experience of CI/CD pipelines including planning, designing, testing, building and maintaining.
• Hands on experience of engineering and maintaining DevOps toolchains to support secure and highly resilient services using DevOps principles and processes.
• Strong skills in coding or scripting (in a major programming/scripting language) to provide automation and consistent deployment patterns with knowledge of TDD (Test Driven Development) and Source Control.
• Experience of working in multidisciplinary teams using agile and user centred methodologies, including iterative design, planning and improvement with a good understanding of accessibility requirements.
• Proactivity and enthusiasm about developing your own knowledge and sharing knowledge to build an open, collaborative community, mentor junior colleagues and engage with the wider organisation, third party suppliers and cross-government channels to gain insight and share experiences.
• Excellent interpersonal, verbal and written communication skills; proven ability to provide technical assurance to projects and developments; communicating technical issues clearly and concisely to both technical and non-expert audiences and building effective working relationships with peers and third-party suppliers producing clear and accurate documentation.

Desirable:

Experience of the following or a commitment to develop skills in these technologies:

• Project management tools such as Jira.
• Version control with Git and GitHub.
• GitHub Actions
• Experience of working with Content Management Systems such as WordPress, Wagtail or equivalent.
• Scripting for Linux and Windows platforms.
• Database administration
• Experience of working in or with relevant sector(s) (government, archives, information services, culture and heritage).

Benefits

Generous benefits package, including pension, sports and social club facilities, onsite gym, discounted rates at our on-site cafe and opportunities for training and development. Annual leave entitlement of 22 days per calendar year (rising to 25 after the first year, and incrementally to 30 days after six years) and 10½ days public and privilege holidays per annum.

Any move to The National Archives from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax-Free Childcare.

Reasonable adjustments

If a person with disabilities is put at a substantial disadvantage compared to a non-disabled person, we have a duty to make reasonable changes to our processes.

If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should:

• Contact The National Archives via careers@nationalarchives.gov.uk as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.
• Complete the ‘Reasonable Adjustments’ section of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must pass a disclosure and barring security check.

People working with government assets must complete basic personnel security standard 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)
• 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

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

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.

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans initiative.

Contact point for applicants:

• Name: The National Archives Recruitment Team
• Email: careers@nationalarchives.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, in the first instance, you should contact The National Archives via email: careers@nationalarchives.gov.uk

The National Archives need passionate, ambitious and innovative individuals to help us change the way people think about archives.

We employ more than 500 staff in a diverse range of roles, from records specialists and researchers to web developers and marketing assistants – and we want you to join us.

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