Systems Operations Support

at  Greater London Authority

KEY INFORMATION

Salary: £56,797 - £61,482 per annum
Grade: 9
Contract type: Fixed Term
Reference: 045965
Contract details: 2 years
Application closing date: Sun, 07/07/2024 - 23:59

SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE

To be considered for the role you must meet the following essential criteria:

• Experience of, and demonstrable interest in, technologies used in a System and Development operations environment
• Knowledge and understanding of technical and non-technical aspects of maintaining development and test environments, including continuous integration, technical testing and quality assurance
• Experience of developing and managing technical systems and procedures in area such as data integrity (including patching and backups).
• Experience of automated deployment of applications and services to AWS.
• Knowledge/experience of technologies such as Ansible, Packer, Terraform Linux, MySQL, PostgreSQL, NGINX, PHP, Drupal, Tomcat, Maven, Composer, Java.
• Able to define the continuous integration build, co-ordinate build activities across systems and understand how to undertake and support integration testing activities

EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

London’s diversity is its biggest asset and we strive to ensure our workforce reflects London’s diversity at all levels. We welcome applications from everyone regardless of age, gender, gender identity, gender expression, ethnicity, sexual orientation, faith or disability.
We particularly encourage applications from Black, Asian and Minority ethnic candidates and disabled candidates who are currently underrepresented in our workforce.
We are committed to being an inclusive employer and we are happy to consider flexible working arrangements. We would welcome applications from candidates who are seeking part time work as this role is open to job share.
Please note we are a Disability Confident Employer so for candidates who wish to be considered under the scheme and meet the essential criteria, they will automatically be invited to interview. Please note, should you require any adjustments through the process, we will accommodate as much as possible. Please contact the recruitment team for further information if required.
GLA staff are hybrid working up to 3 days a week in our offices and remotely depending on their role. As part of this, you will need to split your time between home working and coming into the office.
In addition to a good salary package, you will be paid every four weeks, providing frequent salary payments. We also offer an attractive range of benefits including 30 days’ annual leave, interest free season ticket loan, interest free bicycle loan and a career average pension scheme.
Additional Information

PLEASE NOTE, ALL CANDIDATES WILL NEED TO CONFIRM THAT THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS APPLICATION FORM IS TRUE AND CORRECT. SHOULD A CANDIDATE DELIBERATELY GIVE FALSE INFORMATION, INCLUDING THE USE OF AI SOFTWARE, THEY UNDERSTAND THAT THIS WOULD DISQUALIFY THEM FROM CONSIDERATION.

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record (DBS) check but some roles may require additional security screening.

ABOUT THE ROLE

The GLA has been at the forefront of digital and data innovation in London since its inception – will you join us as we make an exciting step change in our digital capability?
Digital and data services play a critical role in enabling the delivery of the functions of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly – and it’s critical to ensure these are reliable and of high quality.
As a Systems Operations support officer, you will be responsible for supporting the organisation’s cloud computing infrastructure and ensure the delivery of high-quality, scalable software applications using Infrastructure as Code techniques to build, deploy and provision these systems.
You will work with in-house development operations team to support the smooth running of the digital estate working to optimise our development, testing and release processes. You will initially work mostly with AWS & Linux developing and supporting systems and infrastructure through to production using modern continuous integration/deployment (CI/CD) techniques and supporting analysis, identification, prioritisation and implementation of incremental improvements to our existing services.

PLEASE NOTE ALL APPLICATIONS FOR THIS VACANCY MUST BE SUBMITTED VIA OUR ONLINE RECRUITMENT SYSTEM. WE DO NOT ACCEPT CVS ALONE FOR THIS ROLE. PLEASE UPLOAD A PERSONAL STATEMENT TO THE ‘ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS’ SECTION OF THE FORM. WORD OR PDF FORMAT PREFERRED AND DO NOT INCLUDE ANY PHOTOGRAPHS OR IMAGES.

Please ensure your CV and Personal statement documents are saved with the job reference number as part of the naming convention (E.g. “CV – applicant name - 012345)

PLEASE NOTE, IF YOU DO NOT PROVIDE BOTH A CV AND A PERSONAL STATEMENT, YOU WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED FOR THE ROLE SO PLEASE ENSURE THE ABOVE HAS BEEN SUBMITTED BEFORE THE DEADLINE.

If you wish to talk to someone about the role, the hiring manager Kinda Youssef Allamaa would be happy to speak to you. Please contact her at kinda.youssef@london.gov.uk
If you have any questions about the recruitment process, contact the glaopdcrecruitment@tfl.gov.uk who support the GLA with recruitment.

PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Support development and rollout of a continuous integration and deployment pipeline across the GLA’s Digital estate, use of containerisation techniques where appropriate, and working collaboratively with development operations team
• Support the design and implement infrastructure as code using Terraform (or similar) to provision performant and secure infrastructure. Use cross-platform APIs and automation/deployment technologies such as Ansible (or similar) to orchestrate automated cloud platform deployments and system builds
• Implement and maintain the monitoring solution for digital services and implementing robust security controls and monitoring solutions – across infrastructure and application components - including security and feature patching. Assist in managing user access and permissions to all GLA digital systems and tools.
• Develop and maintain robust and reliable systems to ensure data integrity including: regular backups onsite and to the cloud in accordance with agreed schedules, and; data masking in development and test systems in order to ensure data protection compliance.
• Diagnose and resolve issues within GLA digital services and infrastructure, using standard debugging tools to track down and identify root causes. Work independently to find solutions / identify problems and in collaboration with in-house Dev Ops team, Technical Architect, and third-party suppliers Developers to solve more challenging issues.
• Lead, manage and maintain GLA-wide IT issue and knowledge management systems. Provide technical support up to second level, and proactively liaise with external expert partner for third level support.
• Work with the development operations team during software release management. Take full responsibility for technical release management tasks assigned as part of the release management process.
• Proactively produce and maintain technical and warranty documentation for all GLA digital services, work with external third-party suppliers and cloud service providers to ensure they adhere to our technical standards.. Liaise with users of the documents to ensure that the content is appropriate, understandable and well formatted, promote the documentation amongst target users, as necessary.
• Continuously look for improvements to the wider GLAs Digital estate, particularly in areas such as cyber security improvements, threat and intrusion detection, system recovery, tracking and reducing technical debt and ensuring the estate is secure, reliable and stable.
• Continuously improve your own knowledge of work areas, drive the Development community of practice, and embrace the Agile framework of software delivery. Support colleagues to reach full agility using DevOps best practices including continuous integrations, delivery, and release.
• Manage resources allocated to the job in accordance with the Authority’s policies and Code of Ethics and Standards.
• Realising the benefits of London’s diversity by promoting and enabling equality of opportunities and promoting the diverse needs and aspirations of London’s communities.
• Realise the benefits of a flexible approach to work in undertaking the duties and responsibilities of the job, and participate in multi-disciplinary, cross-departmental and cross-organisational groups and project teams.

To be considered for the role you must meet the following essential criteria:

• Experience of, and demonstrable interest in, technologies used in a System and Development operations environment
• Knowledge and understanding of technical and non-technical aspects of maintaining development and test environments, including continuous integration, technical testing and quality assurance
• Experience of developing and managing technical systems and procedures in area such as data integrity (including patching and backups).
• Experience of automated deployment of applications and services to AWS.
• Knowledge/experience of technologies such as Ansible, Packer, Terraform Linux, MySQL, PostgreSQL, NGINX, PHP, Drupal, Tomcat, Maven, Composer, Java.
• Able to define the continuous integration build, co-ordinate build activities across systems and understand how to undertake and support integration testing activitie

If you would like to apply for the role you will need to submit the following:

• Up to date CV
• Personal statement with a maximum of 1500 words. Please ensure you address how you demonstrate the essential criteria outlined above in the advert