Senior DevOps Engineer

We are Ofwat, the Water Services Regulation Authority, a non-ministerial government department responsible for regulating the water sector in England and Wales.

We have an opportunity for a Senior DevOps Engineer to join our IT Operations Team within Corporate Enablers Directorate.

The water sector is entering a new chapter. The government has set out a bold new direction, bringing together expertise from across the sector to deliver better outcomes for customers and the environment. We are collaborating with fellow regulators to respond to recommendations in The Independent Water Commission Report, the Welsh Governments response to the Green Paper, Shaping the Future of Water Governance in Wales, and the Governments White Paper, A new vision for water.

Ofwat is working with the government and other regulators to help create a new body for England, bringing together our strengths with those of the Drinking Water Inspectorate, the Environment Agency and Natural England. We are also continuing to work with the Welsh Government to support decisions on the future arrangements for Wales.

While these changes take shape, our mission remains the same: to hold water companies to account, drive performance, and ensure the sector delivers real value for customers, communities, and the environment. If youre passionate about making a difference, this is a unique moment to join us and help shape the future of water, and together we can continue to make a positive impact.

You can find out more about why you should join Ofwat, our strategy, values and our framework for success in the attached Information for Candidates Pack.

The Senior DevOps Engineer will play a key role within the IT Operations team, part of Ofwats Corporate Enablers (CE) Directorate. The CE Directorate brings together the functions that provide Ofwat with its people, technology, security, financial and operational services. The role will help the team deliver changes safely and consistently by establishing the deployment pipelines, controls and working practices needed for a modern data platform.

Reporting to the Head of IT Operations, the Senior DevOps Engineer will lead the practical design, build and operation of Ofwats deployment capability for its data platforms. The role is focused on Azure DevOps and Microsoft Fabric, with responsibility for creating repeatable, secure and auditable routes for changes to move from development through test to production.

This is a hands-on senior engineering role. The postholder will configure repositories, branch policies, service connections, environments, approvals and automated pipelines; integrate Azure DevOps with Fabric and related Microsoft services; and introduce proportionate testing, release and rollback controls. They will diagnose deployment failures and improve the process as the platform and its products develop.

Key deliverables:

In this role you will be expected to:

• Assess the current delivery process and produce a practical implementation plan for moving data platform development and releases into Azure DevOps.
• Design and implement a consistent Azure DevOps structure covering repositories, branching, pull requests, branch policies, code review and release records.
• Build reusable YAML pipeline templates that support continuous integration and controlled deployment across development, test and production environments.
• Establish repeatable promotion of Microsoft Fabric and Power BI artefacts, using Azure DevOps, Fabric Git integration, deployment pipelines, APIs and other Microsoft tooling where appropriate.
• Automate environment-specific configuration, parameters and connections, and manage service connections, managed identities, service principals and secrets in line with security requirements.
• Introduce automated quality checks and tests for relevant Python, PySpark, SQL, notebooks, data pipelines, semantic models and configuration before deployment.
• Configure deployment environments, approvals, checks and segregation of duties, with clear procedures for failed releases, rollback and recovery.
• Use infrastructure as code and scripting, including Bicep or Terraform, PowerShell, Azure CLI or Python, to remove manual steps and make platform changes repeatable.
• Implement monitoring and reporting for build and deployment pipelines, investigate failures and use delivery evidence to improve reliability and lead time.
• Share knowledge and expertise with data engineers who are new to DevOps through pairing, practical workshops, code and pull-request reviews, written guides, templates and supported releases.
• Work with engineers, architects, IT, Security, Data Strategy, delivery leads and suppliers to embed shared ownership of deployment processes and keep standards current.

To be successful in this role you will need the below essential attributes, experience, skills and knowledge:

Experience, skills and knowledge

1. Lead criterion 1: Significant experience delivering Azure DevOps CI/CD solutions for complex cloud, data or analytics platforms, including source control, automated pipelines and release management.
2. Lead Criterion 2: Experience deploying and managing Microsoft Fabric, Power BI and Azure data services using DevOps practices, source control and release automation.
3. Strong automation and infrastructure-as-code skills, with experience delivering scalable, maintainable and reusable solutions.
4. Good understanding of secure delivery practices in Azure, including access controls, secrets management, governance and operational risk management.
5. Experience implementing automated, governed and repeatable deployment processes across development, test and production environments.
6. Experience supporting production services, including deployment monitoring, troubleshooting, release improvement and operational support.
7. Ability to work effectively within multidisciplinary teams, sharing knowledge and expertise to support capability building, knowledge transfer and the adoption of DevOps best practices.

Attributes

8. Delivers Outcomes

9. Promotes Collaboration

10. Committed Learner

Attributes as per Ofwat's Framework for Success for the relevant salary grade. You can read more about Attributes here.