Senior IT Infrastructure Engineer

You will work across a broad production environment, supporting and maintaining infrastructure that underpins critical services. This includes cloud, network and on prem systems, where you will investigate issues, identify root causes and restore service with minimal disruption.

Alongside operational work, you will lead and implement infrastructure change, ensuring that changes are introduced in a controlled and deliberate way. You will monitor systems proactively, identifying risks and opportunities for improvement, and contribute to strengthening security, resilience and overall service reliability. You will also work closely with colleagues, stakeholders and suppliers to deliver and improve services, bringing a practical and informed technical perspective to decisions.

This role also includes contributing to the ongoing development of the environment, providing input into technical design and helping shape improvements over time.

Our environment:

You will be working across a varied and evolving technical estate that includes Microsoft 365, Azure, cloud and on prem infrastructure, networking, virtualisation, and enterprise storage and backup platforms.

We are actively improving our infrastructure, with a clear focus on strengthening resilience and service recovery, improving security and reducing risk, and modernising core services in a controlled and sustainable way.

We are looking for an engineer who is technically strong, credible and able to operate at depth across complex infrastructure.

This is not a role for someone building their foundational skills. You should already be comfortable working in environments where systems are interconnected, business-critical and not always straightforward, and where issues require structured investigation, sound judgement and a clear understanding of impact.

You will bring strong experience designing, supporting and maintaining enterprise infrastructure across cloud and on prem environments, and a solid understanding of infrastructure, networking and security fundamentals and how they interact in practice. You will be comfortable diagnosing complex issues, identifying root cause and implementing fixes that address the underlying problem rather than the symptom. You will also have experience delivering change in live environments, with a clear appreciation of risk, dependencies and the need for control.

You do not need to have experience in every technology we use, but you do need a strong technical foundation and the ability to apply it confidently in unfamiliar or evolving situations.

This is a full time post. However, requests for part-time working, flexible working and job share will be considered, taking into account at all times the operational needs of the Department. A combination of onsite and home working is available and applicants should be able to regularly travel to our Kew site for a minimum of 60% of their work time.

SC clearance/willingness to obtain SC clearance will be required for this role. This requires candidates to have been resident in the UK for at least the past three years. Please do not apply if you have been resident in the UK for less than three years as your application will be rejected.

We are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.

Application Process

As part of your application, you will be asked to provide a summary of your relevant work history and experience and respond to a scenario-based question.

Your work history should include the following:

• Highlight roles where you have worked with infrastructure operations, support or delivery
• Include the technologies and environments you have worked with (e.g. cloud, networking, Microsoft platforms, enterprise systems)
• Show the scale and complexity of the environments you have supported

Both elements will be assessed against the essential criteria below. We are particularly interested in how you apply your experience in practice and the judgement you bring to real technical situations. Responses should reflect your own work and understanding.

Essential Criteria:

• A strong background and broad hands-on experience in managing, supporting and developing infrastructure services in a complex enterprise environment, including cloud and on-premise networking, Microsoft 365 and Azure, Hyper-V, server hardware, data domain backup, EMC storage, TCP/IP, DNS, firewalls, networks, Microsoft Active Directory, SCCM, service management and ITIL service management processes.