Lead Site Reliability Engineer

Location

Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, London, Manchester

About the job

Job summary

The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST) helps businesses invest, innovate, export and grow across the UK. The Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) directorate helps to deliver this by designing, building and running the services, platforms and technology that businesses and colleagues rely on every day. 

Our teams work on a wide range of services and technologies, including: 

• digital services that help businesses access government support, guidance and opportunities 

• data and AI products that support decision making and enable innovation 

• internal tools and services that help colleagues work more effectively 

• secure technology and platforms that support critical government services 

• cyber security services that protect systems, data and users 

By joining DDaT, you'll work on services used by businesses, colleagues and citizens across the UK. You'll be part of multidisciplinary teams focused on improving services, solving complex problems and delivering better outcomes for users. 

We are committed to creating an inclusive and supportive workplace. In recognition of this, we were named Best Public Sector Employer at the Women in Tech Employer Awards 2025! 

As a Lead Site Reliability Engineer, you will lead a team of Site Reliability Engineers while providing technical leadership across the design, delivery and continuous improvement of reliable, scalable and secure services that underpin critical BIST digital products.  

You’ll work across modern cloud technologies and collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to improve how we build and operate services. From observability and monitoring through to CI/CD, infrastructure as code and service-level objectives, you’ll help teams build resilient services and make informed decisions about reliability, performance and operational risk.  

This is a hands-on technical leadership role alongside responsibility for developing and supporting your team. You’ll help shape our approach to Site Reliability Engineering, improve reliability and reduce operational burden, while creating an environment where engineers can learn, develop and do their best work  

You’ll work closely with product managers, architects, delivery colleagues and engineers across DDaT, helping to shape platform strategy and influence good engineering practices. You’ll also help build and scale our global platform, support live services through an on-call rota and lead improvements that enhance service quality and delivery outcomes.  

In BIST this role is known as Senior Site Reliability Engineer – Lead  

 

Job description

You will: 

• Lead and develop a team of Site Reliability Engineers, providing technical direction, coaching and support.  

• Provide technical leadership across SRE and DevOps, helping teams build reliable, scalable and sustainable services.  

• Design, build and maintain cloud infrastructure using infrastructure-as-code approaches.  

• Lead the adoption of effective observability, including monitoring, logging, metrics and alerting.  

• Help teams define and use SLIs, SLOs and error budgets to make informed decisions about reliability and delivery.  

• Improve CI/CD and engineering automation to enable safe, frequent and low-risk change.  

• Oversee live-service reliability and support effective incident and problem management, promoting a learning-focused and blameless culture.  

• Work with product, delivery and architecture colleagues to ensure platform services meet user and business needs.  

• Coach and mentor engineers and contribute to the wider DDaT engineering community.  

• Ensure security, resilience and compliance are embedded into engineering practices.  

Person specification

It is essential that you have: 

• Experience leading, supporting and developing engineers, providing technical direction through line management, coaching or mentoring (LEAD)  

• Strong experience applying modern SRE, DevOps or platform engineering practices within cloud environments such as AWS, Azure or Google Cloud (LEAD)  

• Experience designing, operating and improving reliable and scalable distributed systems, with a focus on reliability, performance and user impact.  

• Experience designing and delivering infrastructure-as-code and automation solutions, using technologies such as Terraform, CloudFormation or equivalent.  
• Strong communication and stakeholder skills, with the ability to influence engineering practices, explain complex technical concepts clearly and build effective relationships. 

It is desirable that you have: 

• Experience writing clean, maintainable and well-tested code in at least one programming language such as Python  

• Experience defining and using SLIs, SLOs, error budgets and observability practices to improve service reliability  

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Communicating and Influencing
• Leadership

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Programming and Build (software engineering)
• Modern Standards Approach
• Availability and Capacity Management
• Development Process Optimisations
• Information Security
• User Focus

Benefits

• 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 employer contribution of 28.97%

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

How to apply

As part of the application process you will be asked to upload a two-page CV and complete a 750-word personal statement outlining how you meet the essential skills and experience listed above. You can use bullet points and subheadings if you prefer. 

Sift will be from week commencing 11th November 2026 

Interview 1 will be from week commencing 23rd November 2026 

Interview 2 will be from week commencing 30th November 2026 

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 Lead Criterion ‘Experience leading, supporting and developing engineers, providing technical direction through line management, coaching or mentoring’ and ‘Strong experience applying modern SRE, DevOps or platform engineering practices within cloud environments such as AWS, Azure or Google Cloud’ 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 

We will assess against capabilities which are outlined under DevOps engineer within the DDaT framework which can be found here.  

The Interview process will consist of two stages. Candidates will first be required to complete a technical problem solving exercise and those who successfully meet the required standard at this stage will be invited to a second stage interview. 

 

How we offer 

Offers will 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. BIST'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 

• security services record 

• location details 

 

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. BIST 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 BIST, 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 in the candidate pack attached to this advert.  

Find out more about life at BIST, 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 basic (or equivalent) 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.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).