This role may be located in one of the following locations; Blackpool or Newcastle.
Please find further information on the Corporate hub locations here.
Please note that for candidates requesting to work in Newcastle, this role will be based at Benton Park View from September 2025, and then at 1 Pilgrim Place in Newcastle city centre by the end of 2027.
Job Summary
Please note this role requires you to pass Security Check clearance. For further information, please see 'Selection process details'.
Are you experienced in live service IT Service Management?
Do you want to help shape an emerging function in one of UK government’s largest IT environments?
Do you pride yourself in having the technical ability to fix complex issues and continuously improve systems?
The primary role of Centralised Application Support Services (CASS) is to provide application operations which deliver continuity of service for our users across DWP Digital services.
As a Senior Application Operations Engineer, You Will Be:
- Working collaboratively with teams across Digital Group to ensure smooth running of operational processes.
- Providing service management expertise and technical skills to ensure service availability and the appropriate respond when issues occur.
- Affectively utilise Incident, Problem and Change and Release Mgmt. as well as automating and innovating via continuous improvement to enhance the services we provide for citizens.
If this is something that interests you, apply today!
Job Description
As a Senior Application Operations Engineer, you will be responsible for the support, management, maintenance and improvement initiatives for a single application or a suite of applications. These systems could range in technology from Linux to Windows servers, SQL (Structured Query Language) and Non-SQL databases, Cloud and On-Premise based servers and various third-party software.
You will be an escalation point on application issues and work with other business and technical teams to assist with the ongoing reliability, performance and support of those applications.
You Will Share And Follow IT Service Management Best Practice, Using Frameworks Like ITIL 4, Agile And Scrum To Ensure Service And Operational Processes Run Smoothly And Deliver Value For The End User Community. This Includes:
- Being responsible for ensuring that incident management objectives are met within your portfolio, incidents within your domain are effectively handled and assisting with the implementation on any lessons learnt.
- Working collectively with others to raise problems, ensuring a high level of incident to problem linkage rates and the full investigation of problems.
- Exploring and driving ways to automate monitoring and implement additional requirements to improve service availability and stability.
- Being responsible for changes that affect the systems under your remit. Alongside working with other change requestors to fully impact and assure wider DWP activities on your affected applications.
- Ensuring that all knowledge articles within the service you support are raised, are kept current, capture the required information and are reviewed in line with best practice.
Working closely with Lead Application Operations Engineers and the Process Team. This includes:
- Providing upwards reporting to your Lead Application Operations Engineer on success stories, service issues and the future landscape
- Providing upwards reporting to the Process Team on Service Management areas including incidents, changes, and problems
- Sharing your knowledge, experience and best practice throughout the function including with Associate and Working Application Operations Engineers
- Obtaining and providing feedback to highlight positive accomplishments and improvement areas
- From time to time, you may be requested to stand-in for your Lead Application Operations Engineer as a Deputy representing your team and/or the wider CASS function.
Develop And Maintain Strong Working Relationships With The Application Operations Engineers In Your Team And With Other Multi-disciplinary Teams, Including Service Owners; DevOps And SRE Engineers; Architects; Testers; Business Analysts; Process Owners; External Partners And Suppliers; Other Government Departments And Many Others. This Includes:
- Identify, suggest and where possible, implementing continual improvement. Alongside driving a continual service improvements culture with regards to both technical and process improvements.
- Identifying and working collectively with other areas to ensure that all risks within the service are raised, graded correctly, and mitigated where appropriate
Being an active member of Centralised Application Support Services function, taking a leading role on your team, sharing best practice and knowledge across the function
- You will be an ambassador for the organisation and a great mentor to fellow team members
- Leading and championing continual service improvement across your team and other DWP Digital areas ensuring the success of both technical and process improvements
- You will be responsible for ensuring that the on-call rota for your services is up to date and complete
- Undertake a leading role in the transition of new services into our department ensuring that systems are onboarded smoothly with the appropriate knowledge transfer
- Undertake a leading role in the onboarding of new starters into our department ensuring that they are welcomed and supported throughout this process
Providing technical expertise by having advanced technical skills which allows you to pick up new issues or unusual changes and effectively handle them. You will effectively deal with escalations either from fellow team members or other stakeholders.
On Call requirement: There will be a contractual requirement to join an on-call rota providing overnight cover, usually 16:00pm – 08:00am on weekdays, and 24 hours for weekends and bank holidays. The cover is shared around the team and would normally equate to being on-call for a week, every other week.
As a Senior Application Operations Engineer, you will be responsible for the support, management, maintenance and improvement initiatives for a single application or a suite of applications. These systems could range in technology from Linux to Windows servers, SQL (Structured Query Language) and Non-SQL databases, Cloud and On-Premise based servers and various third-party software.
You will be an escalation point on application issues and work with other business and technical teams to assist with the ongoing reliability, performance and support of those applications.
Develop And Maintain Strong Working Relationships With The Application Operations Engineers In Your Team And With Other Multi-disciplinary Teams, Including Service Owners; DevOps And SRE Engineers; Architects; Testers; Business Analysts; Process Owners; External Partners And Suppliers; Other Government Departments And Many Others. This Includes:
- Identify, suggest and where possible, implementing continual improvement. Alongside driving a continual service improvements culture with regards to both technical and process improvements.
- Identifying and working collectively with other areas to ensure that all risks within the service are raised, graded correctly, and mitigated where appropriate
Being an active member of Centralised Application Support Services function, taking a leading role on your team, sharing best practice and knowledge across the function
- You will be an ambassador for the organisation and a great mentor to fellow team members
- Leading and championing continual service improvement across your team and other DWP Digital areas ensuring the success of both technical and process improvements
- You will be responsible for ensuring that the on-call rota for your services is up to date and complete
- Undertake a leading role in the transition of new services into our department ensuring that systems are onboarded smoothly with the appropriate knowledge transfer
- Undertake a leading role in the onboarding of new starters into our department ensuring that they are welcomed and supported throughout this process
Providing technical expertise by having advanced technical skills which allows you to pick up new issues or unusual changes and effectively handle them. You will effectively deal with escalations either from fellow team members or other stakeholders.
On Call requirement: There will be a contractual requirement to join an on-call rota providing overnight cover, usually 16:00pm – 08:00am on weekdays, and 24 hours for weekends and bank holidays. The cover is shared around the team and would normally equate to being on-call for a week, every other week.
Person specification
See selection process for further details.
If you would like to learn more about the role, please contact Richard.Hanley@dwp.gov.uk
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Changing and Improving
- Communicating and Influencing
- Managing a Quality Service
- Working Together
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
Alongside your salary of £44,447, Department for Work and Pensions contributes £12,876 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
We also have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:
- Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
- Generous annual leave – at least 25 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (pro–rata for part time employees), plus 9 days public and privilege leave.
- Support for financial wellbeing, including interest-free season ticket loans for travel, a cycle to work scheme and an employee discount scheme.
- Health and wellbeing support including our Employee Assistance Programme for specialist advice and counselling and the opportunity to join HASSRA a first-class programme of competitions, activities and benefits for its members (subscription payable monthly).
- Family friendly policies including enhanced maternity and shared parental leave pay after 1 year’s continuous service.
- Funded learning and development to support progress in your role and career. This includes industry recognised qualifications and accreditations, coaching, mentoring and talent development programmes.
- An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join professional and interpersonal networks including Women’s Network, National Race Network, National Disability Network (THRIVE) and many more.
This job role may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in their DWP office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and your office will be your contractual place of work. The number of days that anyone will be able to work at home will be determined primarily by business need but personal circumstances and other relevant circumstances will also be taken into account. If you are successful, any opportunities for hybrid working, including whether a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for you, will be discussed with you prior to you taking up your post.
Salary Information
Pay for this role is from £44,447 to £46,547.
Our offer to successful candidates will be based on an assessment of your skills and experience as demonstrated at interview.
Existing Civil Servants who secure a new role on lateral transfer will maintain their current salary.
Existing Civil Servants who gain promotion will either move to the bottom of the grade pay scale or get a 10% increase to their current salary whichever would be the greater.
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.
Stage 1: Application
Your Application Will Consist Of Four Parts:
- A Personal Details application form.
- Employment history - this should contain your work experience and any skills, qualifications and accomplishments relevant to the jobs you have completed.
- Personal statement - up to 750 words. This statement should be used to provide examples of how you meet the essential criteria below:
- Demonstrable ability of building strong relationships within a team and with other stakeholders to ensure service outcomes are achieved.
- Evidence of successfully implementing improvement initiatives from a technical and process angle. A passion for automation over manual interventions.
- Problem Solving & Systems Thinking - Proven ability to break down complex problems and think in terms of system architecture; Evidence of ability to resolve complex incidents across multiple systems.
- Technical statement (up to 250 words). The following statement is aligned to the required technical skill of: Service Management.
- Previous experience of managing the technical application support of services including understanding and exposure of the ITIL Service Management Framework to deliver a quality service.
The sift panel will use the information in your employment history, personal statement and technical statement to assess your experience, skills and knowledge.
An initial sift will be conducted using the technical statement. Candidates who pass the initial sift will be progressed to a full sift.
For Hints and Tips on completing your application visit Applying for jobs at DWP Digital.
Applications will be sifted at regular intervals from the date the posts are advertised. Please apply as soon as you can, do not wait until the end of the campaign.
Important Information
- You will be asked to complete your employment history. Any information that you would customarily share on a CV should therefore be entered onto the application form.
- Personal details that could be used to identify you including your name, contact details and address must be removed for your application to be considered.
- If your employment history, personal statement or technical statement contain any personal details your application will be withdrawn.
- 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 for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use. A candidate’s guide to artificial intelligence (AI) in recruitment.
- Stage 2: Interview
If you’re successful at sift stage you will be invited to a video interview via Microsoft Teams. There, you will be assessed against the following Behaviours
- Changing and Improving
- Communicating and Influencing
- Managing a Quality Service
- Working Together
Interviews will take place from mid November. Sift and Interview dates to be confirmed.
To help you prepare and settle into the interview you will be sent the interview questions in advance of the interview, at least 5 days prior to your interview. These questions should be treated as confidential and should not be shared. The interview panel may ask you other questions which will not be shared in advance, including follow-up questions, and those about your experience and abilities. Candidates may be asked further probing questions if their response is deemed to require further information to determine suitability for the role.
Candidates are strongly encouraged to secure their interview slot promptly to ensure fairness in preparation time with the questions provided in advance.
Further Information:
Find out more about Working for DWP
If high application volumes are received, the benchmark for candidates to proceed to the next stage may be raised. In line with our commitment to the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS), we aim to advance all candidates applying under the DCS who meet the minimum standard. However, we may only progress those candidates who best meet the required standards.,
A reserve list may be held for a period of 3 months from which further appointments can be made.
All successful candidates and those placed on reserve will be posted in merit list order by location.
For these vacancies, we strongly recommend that applicants consult with an immigration specialist or qualified advisor to assess their eligibility for Visa Sponsorship before deciding to apply. Please note that while we consider sponsorship requests in accordance with current DWP guidance and Home Office policy, sponsorship cannot be guaranteed.
Security Clearance Requirement
You must meet the security requirements before you can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check.
For meaningful checks to be carried out, you will need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time, to enable appropriate checks to be carried out and produce a result which provides the required level of assurance. Whilst a lack of UK residency in itself is not necessarily a bar to a security clearance, and expectation of UK residency may range from 3 to 5 years. Failure to meet the residency requirements needed for the role may result in the withdrawal of provisional jobs offers.
For further information on National Security Vetting please visit the Demystifying Vetting website.
Reasonable Adjustment
At DWP we value diversity and inclusion and actively encourage and welcome applications from everyone, including those that are underrepresented in our workforce.
We consider visible and non-visible disabilities, neurodiversity or learning differences, chronic medical conditions, or mental ill health. Examples include dyslexia, epilepsy, autism, chronic fatigue, or schizophrenia.
If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should: Contact Government Recruitment Service via
DigitalRecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.
Complete the “Reasonable Adjustments” section in the “Additional requirements” page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you’re deaf, a Language Service Professional.
For further information on reasonable adjustments, terms and conditions and how we recruit visit the How we recruit page.
The Civil Service values honesty and integrity and expects all candidates to abide by these principles. Please ensure that all examples provided in your application are taken directly from your own experience and that you describe the examples in your own words. Applications will be screened and if evidence of plagiarism or copying examples/answers from other sources is found, your application will be withdrawn. Internal DWP candidates may also face disciplinary action.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.
Security
Successful candidates must undergo a 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.
Successful candidates must undergo a 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.
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).
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.
The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.
Contact point for applicants
Job Contact :
- Name : Richard Hanley
- Email : Richard.Hanley@dwp.gov.uk
Recruitment team
- Email : DigitalRecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
Further information
Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission Recruitment Principles. If you wish to make a complaint, please find further details here: https://careers.dwp.gov.uk/how-we-recruit/.
