Senior DevOps Engineer

Salary: £66,059, with an opportunity to qualify for additional allowances and a skills-related payment under the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability (GDDPC) Framework - formerly known as DDaT.

We support full time (36 hours per week) or part-time working (minimum three days a week).

Due to the sensitive nature of our work, this role is fully office-based with no option for remote or home working.

About us

We're MI6, also known as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). Our mission is to protect the security and economic wellbeing of the UK from overseas threats such as regional instability, terrorism, and cyber attacks. Working across the globe and in close partnership with MI5 and GCHQ, we help the Government to counter these threats through the provision of secret intelligence. You’ll provide vital support to this work, within a collaborative and encouraging environment that puts the emphasis on teamwork.

MI6 Tech

We are looking for experienced professionals to collaborate on some of the biggest challenges facing the UK.

Operating at the heart of the mission, you’ll use your technical skills to protect the UK, disrupt the activities of hostile states, and exploit opportunities in the digital space.

Almost all of MI6’s operational work is underpinned by technology; from keeping our officers safe overseas, to the secure platforms that connect our global partnerships. The challenges we face are complex, varied, and vast.

You will share our vision and values, and will work on seemingly impossible puzzles, to make the country safer and more prosperous.

This is what we do, every day, at MI6.

The role

As a senior member of our software engineering team, you'll be expected to provide technical direction and mentorship to less experienced colleagues. You will be a hands‑on practitioner responsible for deploying, operating and maintaining software services across a variety of platforms, from standalone systems to large Kubernetes clusters on cloud platforms, and everything in between.

You will deploy and operate software services on established platforms, where you will build, maintain, and continuously improve Kubernetes‑based deployments. Your role involves developing and optimising CI/CD pipelines and release automation to ensure seamless delivery. You’ll apply Site Reliability Engineering principles to production services, and monitor service health, performance, availability, and reliability to maintain high standards of stability.

When challenges arise, you will troubleshoot deployment and operational issues, while working to improve observability, incident response, and general operational processes. You will make appropriate use of AI‑assisted tools to improve delivery efficiency. Throughout these tasks, you will collaborate closely with development, platform, and infrastructure teams, always seeking out opportunities to reduce manual effort and increase the speed of deployment.

About you

You’ll be self‑motivated, with high standards and a commitment to excellence. You'll have experience of using AI within engineering processes, reviewing the output of AI, guiding AI to produce software and deployments that meet corporate standards, and experience integrating AI capabilities into production systems, including familiarity with emerging standards such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

You’ll have a relevant degree or equivalent experience in industry, and a passion for writing code, improving processes, and communicating with technical and non‑technical colleagues alike. You'll be constantly looking to improve yourself and learn new things, and you'll thrive in a fast‑paced, dynamic environment.

Training and development

You’ll be joining a community that invests in helping people to grow their skills. You’ll have access to a broad mix of learning opportunities, including in‑house and online training, technical deep dives and development pathways shaped around your interests and the needs of the organisation. This includes support to strengthen your capability across modern AI techniques, Cloud technologies and wider analytical or engineering practices.

We’ll support you with the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework. You’ll also have opportunities to work with external professional bodies and training providers offering routes to specialist accreditation, advanced AI training and broader professional recognition. Whether you choose to deepen your expertise in a specific technical area or expand your capability across new domains, you’ll have the guidance and support you need to progress.

You’ll also benefit from mentoring, peer support and a collaborative community that shares knowledge openly. You’ll have opportunities to rotate across different teams, explore emerging technologies and contribute to shaping how MI6 evolves its AI and data science capability. As you develop, you’ll have the space to experiment, increase your expertise and play an active role in strengthening our AI practice across the organisation.

Rewards and benefits

The benefits include:

• 25 days annual leave, automatically rising to 30 days after 5 years' service
• an additional 10.5 days of public and privilege holidays
• opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme
• interest‑free season ticket loan (travel and parking)
• pension scheme with employer contributions of at least 28.97%
• cycle to work scheme
• a subsidised gym and an on‑site restaurant/coffee shop
• paid parental and adoption leave

Equal opportunities

At MI6 diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission. To protect the UK, we need a truly diverse workforce that reflects the society we serve. This includes those with different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, ways of thinking and those with disabilities or neurodivergence. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including those from groups that are under‑represented in our workforce such as women, those from an ethnic minority background, people with disabilities and those from lower socio‑economic backgrounds.

• Find out more on our website.

Offer of Interview

We are committed to providing equitable opportunities throughout the recruitment process to support candidates with disabilities. As part of this, we aim to ensure that a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants, who best meet the essential minimum criteria for this position, will be offered an interview if it is practical for us to do so. (This is known as the ‘Offer of Interview’.)

To secure an interview for this role, the minimum criteria (in order of application process) are:

• Reaching the minimum pass mark for the online Situational Judgement Test which assesses your ability to problem‑solve.
• Demonstrating platform / DevOps delivery expertise, including building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and platform tools to deploy secure, reliable cloud applications. To be assessed at application sift.
• Demonstrating your ability to collaborate with stakeholders to deliver new features, provide technical guidance, and embed secure coding. To be assessed at application sift.

There is a wide range of extra support available throughout the recruitment process to enable you to do your best.

• Visit our website for information on the reasonable adjustments we can offer.

What to expect

Our recruitment process is fair, transparent, and based on merit. You must successfully pass each stage of the process to progress to the next. Here is a brief overview of each stage, in order:

• An initial