DevOps Engineer/ Senior DevOps Engineer

Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Oxfordshire – primarily based onsite / some home working available

About Us

Diamond Light Source is one of the world’s most advanced scientific facilities. We’re home to the UK’s synchrotron light source – a giant microscope producing beams of light 10 billion times brighter than the sun. Probing the structure and composition of matter, our work drives innovation in everything from vaccines to nanotech.

At Diamond we are currently undertaking a major upgrade of the facility, known as Diamond-II. Diamond-II will combine a new machine and new beamlines with a comprehensive series of upgrades to optics, detectors, sample environments, sample delivery capabilities and computing, which will ultimately generate an even more brilliant light source at a higher energy.

About the Role

We now have an opportunity for a talented DevOps Engineer to join our Cloud Team, working to support the growing use of cutting-edge scientific software deployed in a Cloud Native environment. The infrastructure managed by the Scientific Computing Group ranges from on-premises Kubernetes based platforms, to off-prem Openstack Clouds offering high throughput computing as a service.

The development of synchrotron technology proceeds at a blistering, relentless pace and requires a cutting edge and exceptionally resilient technical estate to facilitate its critical work, turning theoretical science into practical and often life-changing discoveries. The Senior DevOps Engineer will help drive this innovation forward and help exploit the use of Cloud Native infrastructure to enable science.

Duties will include:

• Analysing cutting edge and industry standard DevOps tools and practices in terms of potential use within Diamond’s software development and deployment processes.
• Establishing, maintaining, and participating in international collaborations to contribute to the success of Diamond as an organisation and to the success of Diamond beamlines and their users.
• Providing operational support for software components that underpin both on premises and public cloud hosted DevOps platforms.
• Delivering high quality reporting and professional advice to software developers and systems administrators regarding DevOps best practice and tooling, and presenting findings.
• Contributing to the future approach of scientific and technical software development, deployment, and operations to maximise productivity and data quality for Diamond users.

Working within a close-knit and highly skilled group, you will collaborate and have the opportunity to support and develop other team members and create new projects. Your experience and underlying knowledge will permeate throughout the wider team, leading initiatives, and inspiring others.

*Applicants will be considered at either Grade 4 or 5, depending on the strength of your skills, experience, and qualifications. *

About You

You will hold a degree in a STEM subject or demonstrate significant equivalent experience.

You will have experience in the following areas:

• Developing and deploying production quality software written in Java, Python or Golang.
• Production ready monitoring and logging systems, preferably in a Cloud Native environment using tools such as Prometheus.
• Production systems such as Kubernetes that run containerised applications.
• Configuration management and DevOps tooling.
• Implementing CI/CD pipelines for business-critical applications.
• Customer/user facing issues.
• Ansible, Gitlab, and Kubernetes is highly desirable.
• Exposure to high performance computing (HPC) environments would also be beneficial.

Knowledge of Cloud APIs such as Openstack, GCP or AWS is also advantageous.

Benefits

Diamond offers an exceptional benefits package to support staff in achieving a positive work/life balance. This includes 26 days annual leave plus Christmas closure, public holidays, 2 annual volunteering days and flexible working hours. We also offer an excellent defined benefit pension scheme. Staff also have access to a range of amenities on site including a nursery, cafes, a restaurant and sports and leisure facilities. A relocation allowance may also be available where applicable.

To Apply

Please use the online application process to apply and tell us why you believe you are suitable for this role.

The closing date for applications is 11thFebruary, however, we encourage early applications as some candidates may be interviewed before this date.