Distinguished Engineer- (Head of Service Reliability Engineering)

Job summary

This is a rare opportunity to shape reliability engineering across one of the UK’s largest and most important digital estates.

Enterprise Live Services (ELS) at HMRC is evolving into a modern, engineering-led organisation - enabling HMRC to deliver change faster while strengthening reliability, resilience and trust.

As Head of Service Reliability Engineering, you will lead a distinct, independent capability spanning services, products and platforms. You will make reliability, operability and observability integral to engineering from the outset.

With enterprise-wide reach and influence, you will set the direction for SRE, raise service maturity and build a lasting capability that enables teams to innovate safely and operate with confidence.

Job description

The Head of Service Reliability Engineering is accountable for defining, embedding, and continuously raising service reliability engineering capability across HMRC.

Sitting within Chief Engineering & Platform Office (CEPO) and Enterprise Live Services (ELS), the role leads the independent SRE tower, operating as a centre of excellence for reliability, operability, resilience, and observability. The role does not own delivery, platforms, or live operations. Instead, it coaches, challenges, and enables product, platform, and ELS teams to meet enterprise reliability and service maturity expectations using objective, evidence‑based practices.

The role provides strategic leadership and technical authority to ensure that:

• Reliability and operability are designed into services from inception
• Assurance is grounded in observable service behaviour and maturity evidence
• Enterprise standards enable autonomy and speed, rather than acting as delivery gates
• HMRC can demonstrate confidence, auditability, and resilience at scale

Person specification

Technical Leadership: Provides senior technical leadership in enterprise-scale Reliability Engineering, with the credibility to influence architecture, set standards and deliver reliability outcomes in complex, regulated environments.

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE): Leads the adoption of SRE practices by using SLOs, error budgets and reliability metrics to drive measurable improvements in service performance and operational decision-making.

Observability: Establishes and governs enterprise observability capabilities, using telemetry, dependency mapping and modern monitoring platforms to improve operational insight and decision quality.

Resilience and Recovery: Designs and embeds resilience practices that validate recovery capabilities, identify operational risks and strengthen service continuity through testing and evidence-based improvements.

Secure-by-Design Operations: Integrates security and reliability disciplines by using security intelligence, risk indicators and close collaboration with cyber teams to enhance service operability and resilience.

Cloud and Platform Engineering: Applies deep expertise in cloud-native and platform-based technologies to assess and mitigate reliability risks associated with architecture, platforms and continuous delivery environments.

Service Maturity and Assurance: Develops and applies service maturity frameworks that use evidence-based assessment to inform risk, investment and operational decisions rather than relying on compliance measures.

Executive Stakeholder Management: Communicates complex technical risks clearly to senior stakeholders and uses objective evidence to influence strategic decisions at Director and Executive level.

What an Outstanding Candidate Would Also Bring (Desirable): Brings experience operating in highly regulated environments, shaping engineering standards across organisations, building reliability communities of practice and supporting modern service management approaches.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £86,000, HM Revenue and Customs contributes £24,914 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).For Benefit details please speak to Lawrence Harris

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

For Selection Process details please speak to Lawrence Harris

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

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