The Role

You’ll lead on responding to outages, triaging issues, balancing stakeholder priorities/concerns, and keeping open communication channels.

You’ll be responsible for designing, developing, and implementing continuous deployment solutions that help our clients to deliver software faster and more efficiently.

You’ll be keen to understand our clients’ ways of working and will have an enthusiasm to learn new tools and technologies as needed.

Essential experience

We want you to have demonstrable experience in DevOps practices and appreciate that Cloud & Platform Engineering are big topics. Ultimately, we’re looking for talented engineers who can learn modern technologies in the digital space.

In the interview, please show your experience in:

· Designing, building, and testing software release processes that cover the entire SDLC.

· Creating, modifying, and maintaining complex CI/CD pipelines.

· Creating dashboards and visualisations for application performance that proactively identify and address potential problems before they occur.

· Using automated testing to detect security issues/vulnerabilities in application and/or infrastructure code, thereby detecting issues before it reaches production (aka Shift-Left).

· Strong experience in operating and maintaining services primarily in any of the BIG three public cloud providers (AWS, Azure, and GCP).

Desirable experience

Some other areas of experience that are not essential but still relevant to the role:

· Identifying problems using RCA or 5-Whys methods and suggesting solutions to reduce the likelihood of incidents reoccurring.

· A strong understanding of cloud networking and security concepts.

· Understanding the principles of containerisation, and how to control and orchestrate groups of containers in production environments.

· Writing clean, organised, structured and version-controlled code.

· Knowledge of at least one scripting language that enables you to perform more complex automation tasks thereby reducing manual toil.

· Preference for using CLI tools over relying on web portals.

· Understanding SRE (live services) ways of working, that enables you to better increase reliability and availability of the service you support.

· Auditing your service for FinOps and SecOps related compliance issues.

Must be eligible for UK Security Clearance.

If you don’t have all this experience please do still apply, as we can coach you in these areas if you join us.

Ready to automate, innovate and make a real impact?

Do you want to build reliable, scalable systems that make a real difference to millions of people? Do you want to work at a certified B Corp with an inclusive and learning culture as part of a diverse team of great people?

If so, Opencast could be the place for you. We’re a growing tech consultancy that creates user-centred solutions with purpose for our clients in government, healthcare and purpose-driven businesses. Working in DevOps, you’ll build and maintain the systems that let teams respond quickly to needs. You’llwork on high-impact projects, helping to build reliable, scalable systems. We align work to industry-recognised roles such as Build & Release Engineer (BRE), Platform Engineer (PLE) or Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) and, where needed, to more specialised areas such as security, cloud hosting, infrastructure or networking.

What’s life like as a DevOps consultant at Opencast?

At Opencast, we love to keep things simple, and we love automation.

It’s not the same as your standard Devops Consultant job. Depending on your client’s needs, you’ll take on a range of roles. These will include:

• Taking the lead on responding to outages, triaging issues, balancing stakeholder priorities/concerns, and keeping communication channels open with all parties.
• Developing, and implementing continuous deployment solutions that help our clients to deliver software faster and more efficiently.
• Collaborating with our clients to understand their ways of working and will have an enthusiasm to learn new tools and technologies as needed.
• Contributing within Opencast communities.
• Ensure that work is carried out in accordance with Opencast’s quality, environmental, and information security policies and procedures, as well as applicable customer policies, standards, and procedures while working on client.

We care about building things right. We believe in good devops practices and keeping things simple. We want to support you as much as we can on interiorising our approach to devops engineering and you supporting others.

• We are proud consultants who combine our own experience and approach with our company values.
• We are comfortable with new tech. We are empowered, cloud native, vendor agnostic devops engineers. We are empathetic, patient and care about quality.
• We know when to pick our battles and how to manage expectations. We are humble, inclusive team players that listen and collaborate, with zero egos!
• We’re always willing to teach and help others (inside or outside of our team). And we’re always willing to learn.
• It’s a varied job that keeps you super technical and excited.

Salary:

• £50,000 - £60,000

Some of the benefits our offer includes:

• A competitive pension, health cash plan, share options and discretionary bonus.
• Flexible hours and 25 days’ holiday.
• People to support you every step of the way.

Where you’ll work:

• Your working time at Opencast will be split between multiple locations, including from our HQ and hub locations, client site or home. Travel is part of life at Opencast, and takes in account requirements of your work, our clients and your team.

We include you:

• We welcome candidates from all identities, attributes, ways of thinking and backgrounds to thrive in a career at Opencast. Our aim is for the diversity of our people to be reflected in the solutions we deliver, to help create a fairer society for all.

Interview:

• Job interviews are on Microsoft Teams. We’ll make any adjustments to help you.

About the job

Who are Answer Digital?

Answer Digital are a proudly Employee-Owned digital transformation consultancy headquartered in Leeds. We’ve delivered large-scale, cutting edge and life saving digital solutions in both the private and healthcare sectors. After a period of huge growth, we’re looking to invest in our people with our first hybrid Technology Consulting Academy.

We’re passionate about investing in our people, so much so that “Nurturation” is one of our core values (our way of nurturing growth through collaboration!).

Our Academy

We’re looking for motivated and ambitious people to join our Technology Consulting Academy. You’ll be employed with us from Day 1 and the programme has been designed by our talented consultants to accelerate the professional development of great people. The Academy will cover all our technical capabilities to a high level, specialising more as the academy progresses.

By the time the Academy is complete, you’ll have all the skills and knowledge to play a pivotal role on one of our projects, helping build solutions for our clients across Software and DevOps Engineering, Data Engineering and Quality Assurance.

Academy Structure: What to expect

With a blend of workshops, mentored coaching sessions and self guided learning, the Academy will cover:

• The fundamentals of the Software Development Lifecycle
• Proficient application of Agile methodologies within a professional environment (e.g. Scrum, Kanban, Lean).
• Training in core technologies used across our technical capabilities including
• Programming Languages (.Net, Javascript, Python)
• Database and Data technology (SQL, Pyspark, ETL, Snowflake, Data Architecture, warehouses and lakehouses)
• DevOps and Cloud Technologies (Azure and AWS, CI/CD, Terraform and Docker)
• Test Frameworks (Cypress, Accessibility and Performance testing)
• Include upskilling in emerging AI technologies and their application in software, date and quality assurance engineering.
• Strategies for fostering personal development and navigating career progression.

You will also be integrated into the broader Answer Digital community, engaging with professionals across various disciplines and industry sectors, with plenty of opportunity to learn. As the Academy approaches its conclusion, you will complete a series of analytical tasks and presentations for your Academy Coach. The Academy culminates in a 2-3 week assignment undertaken alongside an experienced consultant on a live project, followed by a formal presentation of their work to the wider Answer Digital community.

After completing the Academy, you will join one of our technical capabilities supporting our clients to deliver great outcomes.

What you’ll bring to Answer

For us, this isn’t about the jobs you’ve had but the experience you’ve gained along the way though in order to succeed you’ll need;

• Either hands on experience or a qualification in a Technology field (such a tech bootcamp, a computer science degree, a tech apprenticeship etc.) or a Data field (a role involving processing/manipulating large data sets or a mathematics degree etc.)
• Demonstrated interest and experience within the Information Technology sector.
• Someone who constantly challenges assumptions, solves problems and focuses on the details to get things right.
• A great communicator, being able to articulate problems to our clients and how we can solve them.

This could come from working in tech already, a career changer with lots of transferable skills or someone from academia, who’s had plenty of experience with the above - either way, we’d love to hear from you!

It would be great if you also had experience in some of these, but if not we’ll help you with them:

• Experience working in multidisciplinary teams to build something great.
• Practical, hands-on experience working on Agile projects with .Net, Javascript, Python, SQL etc…

About you

This isn’t just about your experience, we’re investing in you as a person and you’ll be set up for success if you have:

• A genuine commitment to developing a career in technology and digital transformation
• A passion for continuous learning and professional development.
• Great communication skills, encompassing the ability to interact confidently with diverse individuals and groups at all organisational levels, and to adapt how you communicate to suit your audience.
• A strong focus on achieving positive outcomes for both end-users and clients.
• A collaborative and team-oriented approach to work.
• Commercial experience or the understanding of commercial impacts to project work
• Effective time management skills and the ability to prioritise

The perks of being at Answer

• We’re an Employee-Owned Company. After 12 months – through the Employee Ownership Trust you will be part of the ownership of Answer; a major factor in driving engagement, retention and growth for our people.
• Competitive salary, starting at £27,500 and increasing to £30,000 after the Academy.
• Flexible annual leave (buy/sell and carry forward).
• Twice a year income-tax free bonus if company-wide performance targets are met - we’re all in this together
• Continuous training and development - if you want to learn, we’ll provide all the support you need.
• Flexible Pension - we match your own contributions up to 5%
• A flexible Healthcare cash plan so you can fund the care you value most.
• A packed social calendar including; end of year party and Summer away days, monthly and quarterly company team socials.
• Free parking at Head Offices in central Leeds, plus Cycle2Work & Green Car Lease schemes to help get you here.
• The chance to give back – get involved nationally and regionally with partnerships to get people from different backgrounds into tech, as well as lots of charity and community events.
• Hybrid and flexible working – you can vary your working when and where you work, to allow you to collaborate better, feed your creativity, and take the time and space to focus when you need to.

Diversity and Inclusion

At Answer we proudly embrace diversity and inclusion - we want to create a safe environment for everyone to bring their true selves to work.

We will do everything we can to support your application. If you require any adjustments to be made to your application (whether that’s support with our interview questions, adjusting how we interview, or financial support with our hiring process) then please speak to Jonny Hiles, TA Lead (jonny.hiles@answerdigital.com)

Our Interview Process

• We pride ourselves on having a fair but flexible recruitment process, we want to create a platform where you can show us your best. For us, keeping it simple means you can focus on understanding if our people, values and the work we do are right for you. Our typical process can be broken down into 3 stages;
• Application Process: Depending on the volume of applications, our process may involve a couple of assessments. We focus on your inherent ability rather than your CV. That’s why the application includes an analytical thinking and problem solving exercise. We want to assess your capacity for analytic thinking and problem-solving—skills that are crucial for a successful career with us.
• Recruiter call: This will be with a member of the recruitment team, and normally lasts 15-30 minutes. We will talk to you about Answer Digital, the type of work we do, and an overview of the role. We’ll ask you some questions about your current situation and why you’re interested in working here. Here, we’d advise asking any questions about our people, such as our culture, career progression, or approach to flexible working.
• Skills based interview: This interview will be with 2 people, normally from the team you’re applying to work with and roughly lasts an hour. This interview will involve questions around your experience, the skills you’ve gained and the work you’ve done. We’ll also ask questions about the role and challenges you might face and how you’d face them. Here, we’d recommend asking questions about the role, the day to day responsibilities and what life in the team is like.
• Cultural/Value interview: The final interview stage is an hour-long discussion with two members of our Leadership team (either Directors or Capability Leads). This interview is a two-way conversation, as much about you assessing if Answer is the right fit for you as it is about us assessing your fit with Answer. The focus will be on our culture and values. We’ll discuss what our values mean to us, and we want to understand what values are important to you and how you like to work. We strongly encourage you to ask any questions you have about Answer as a business, including our business model and our ambitious growth plans.