Principal Applications Operations Engineer

Location: National*

Closing Date: 18th November

Interviews: w/c 2nd December

Grade: Grade 6

(MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer)

Salary: London: £70,303 - £80,475 (which may include an allowance of up to £10,172)

National: £66,314 - £75,810 (which may include an allowance of up to £0)

Working pattern: Full time/Part time/Flexible

Contract Type: Perm

Vacancy number: 91915

*We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your local office. Office locations can be found HERE

The Role

We’re recruiting for a Principal Applications Operations Engineer here at Justice Digital, to support our warm and collaborative LAA Digital teams.

This role aligns against the Principal application operations engineer role from the Government Digital and Data Framework.

The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) relies on decades of investment in Oracle enterprise products that comprise the foundation of our live services.  We are looking for a compassionate and resilient technical leader to care for both our IT estate and the talent that keeps it working.  Simultaneously, we are building new user-centred products and services using open source technologies in the cloud.  We want to build a bridge between our live enterprise services and our new open-source products, using both to achieve transformative digital justice for users.

We have a large community of Application Operation Engineers, DBAs, Cloud Engineers, and Oracle specialists, critical to assuring live service and meeting ongoing business demand.  We are looking for someone who can develop and nurture, as well as recruit and manage the people in these professions, and further contribute to our strategy as a department, ensuring our workforce plan includes the skills needed to deliver our strategy. 

We have rapidly grown as a digital function, and now we need to grow our enterprise and operational capability to provide secure, resilient services, and to be able to manage change at pace within our critical technology and mature digital products.  We strongly encourage empathetic approaches and cross functional working and are looking for people to help build on this culture of agility and openness.

To help picture your life at MoJ Justice Digital please take a look at our blog and our Digital and Technology strategy 2025

Our Tech Estate

We use a range of Oracle technologies, from databases through Enterprise Resource Planners (ERPs), which have all recently been rehosted to run in the cloud (AWS). We are looking for people who specialise in Oracle E-Business Suite and may have experience in Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) Suite, Oracle Analytics Service (OAS), Oracle Identity and Access Management (IDAM), Oracle Access Manager (OAM), Oracle Intelligent Advisor (IAS), and Weblogic.  All our services are in the cloud, and we continue to iterate and improve the infrastructure around them to be more resilient, performant, and cost-effective, relying on MoJ’s strategic hosting teams to help us maintain our services.

We’re happy to help you learn our tech estate once you’re part of our team, and do not require an exact match in your experience, although experience with ERPs is essential.  On top of our Oracle tech, we are building new products using open-source technology and popular programming languages.  We subscribe to the manifesto for agile software development, whilst also acknowledging our enterprise IT is not well-suited for agile delivery, and other traditional approaches may be needed.

Key Responsibilities

As a Principal Applications Operations Engineer at the MoJ you will have technical and people responsibilities.

Technical:

Champion a technical vision and roadmap for our Oracle estate, formed through collaboration, a standards-led approach, and incorporating future trends to achieve our overall strategy

Manage and support high impact, complex change in the estate, while ensuring that release policies, procedures and processes are applied

Assure our live services, including conducting incident management and engaging senior stakeholders during major incidents, whilst also ensuring blameless post-incident evaluations and closure of incident management processes

Promote a culture of automated testing and documentation within all activities, working with the quality profession to improve our ability to make complex change with confidence

Believe in the need to prioritise continuous improvement, and cultivate a culture where all people engage in continuous improvement

Manage the governance and procurement of external suppliers (related to our Oracle estate and infrastructure) to ensure that they align to our roadmap and strategy, and meet our standards and achieve the required outcomes

Partner with Service Owners to improve and enhance reliability, security and compliance in our Oracle estate and all live services.

People:

Recruit, nurture, and help develop our talented Oracle Applications Operations Engineers, Oracle E-Business Suite Developers, Database Administrators other Oracle technical specialists

Mentor and coach junior colleagues to help develop talent and influence people to realise their potential, progress in their careers, and make positive change

Support engineering leadership in building high-performing teams, focused on delivering product-led priorities

Advocate for a diverse, inclusive culture across the engineering community, growing awareness, inclusivity, and balance, including being a champion for increasing women and minorities in our workforce.

Regular out of hours work is required for this role, alongside our teams, to help minimise business disruption.

If this feels like an exciting challenge, something you are enthusiastic about, and you want to join our team, then please read on and apply!

Person Specification

Essential experience

Our ideal candidate will bring experience in these four categories:

Responsibility for live services, including Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), in an Oracle-based estate

Managing a complex Oracle enterprise estate and live services, with responsibility for multiple products, databases, integrations and applications

Implementing and coordinating change and release management across an IT estate

Assuring live services are secure, compliant, performant, and resilient against failure

Directing, coordinating, and supporting resolution of incidents

Procuring, governing, and working with third-party suppliers

Nurturing and support of specialist Oracle talent

Recruiting and managing diverse, specialist technical teams

Performing line management and workforce planning

Mentoring and supporting colleagues, whether one-to-one or in groups

Connecting different workplace cultures and methodologies

Communicating effectively with senior stakeholders at all levels

Collaborating with modern, open-source software development teams

Working in Agile environments and using Agile methodologies

Understanding and enthusiasm for key technologies and technical practices

Operating, changing, and modernising Oracle E-Business Suite (ERP)

Managing IT infrastructure in the cloud, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Employing progressive quality, testing and deployment techniques, including automated testing

Working with and enforcing version control, and using version control tools for code and infrastructure as code

Willingness to be assessed against the requirements for BPSS clearance.

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 and the Civil Service D&I Strategy.

How to Apply

Candidates must submit a CV and Supporting statement (750 words) which describes how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above.

Failure to provide both documents will result in a rejection of your application.

In Justice Digital, we recruit using a combination of the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process:

Communicating and influencing

Making effective decisions

Leadership

Managing a quality service

Developing self and others

Working together

A diverse panel will review your application against the Person Specification above.

Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a 1.5 hour panel interview held via video conference. During the interview, there will be 8 questions and a brief role-play exercise.

Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on relevant technology experience will be conducted prior to the sift.

Should you be unsuccessful in the role that you have applied for but demonstrate the capability for a role at a lower level, we reserve the right to discuss this opportunity with you and offer you the position without needing a further application.

A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months, from which further appointments may be made.

Terms & Conditions

Please review our Terms & Conditions which set out how we recruit and provide further information related to the role and salary arrangements.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact recruitment@digital.justice.gov.uk