Join Ofwat’s IT Operations Team as a Senior DevOps Engineer
This is a Fixed Term Appointment running until 31st December 2027 with possibility to extend.
*Office Location: Birmingham (B5 4UA) with hybrid working*
About Us
We are Ofwat, the Water Services Regulation Authority, a non-ministerial government department responsible for regulating the water sector in England and Wales.
The water sector is entering a new chapter. Following the Independent Water Commission’s Final Report and subsequent White Paper - 'New Vision for Water', the UK government has set out a bold new direction - one that brings together expertise from across the sector to deliver better outcomes for customers and the environment.
Ofwat is working in collaboration with the government and other regulators to help establish a new body for England, combining our strengths with those of the Drinking Water Inspectorate, the Environment Agency, and Natural England. We’re also continuing to engage with the Welsh Government to support future decisions 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 you’re 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.
The Role
This 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 Ofwat’s 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.
About You
Below are some of the key essential experience, skills & knowledge required for this post:
1. Lead criterion 1: Proven experience designing and operating enterprise CI/CD delivery models using Microsoft Fabric for complex data and analytics platforms, covering development through to controlled production deployment.
2. Lead criterion 2: Strong expertise in Azure DevOps Repos and YAML Pipelines, including Git branching strategies, pull requests, branch policies, reusable templates, environments, approvals and checks, service connections, variable groups, secrets management and release traceability.
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.
Why You Should Join Us
* People Centric: Our people are at the heart of Ofwat and everything we do - we ensure all voices are heard and treat each other with respect; you'll be given the autonomy and the support to do your role in the best way.
* Innovative Work Environment: We embrace agile and new ways of working and have a culture build on trust, flexibility, and collaboration.
* Development Opportunities: Gain valuable experience and develop your skills in a supportive and dynamic setting.
* Work-Life Balance: Enjoy the flexibility of working from home combined with the benefits of in person collaboration in our Birmingham and London offices.
* Good employer pension contributions.
* 25 days’ annual leave, increasing to 30 with each year of service, plus bank holidays and an extra 2.5 days of privilege leave.
* Access to exclusive discounts on a variety of goods and services, including retail outlets, theatre tickets, holidays, insurance, and a gym membership.
* Fees paid for membership of relevant professional bodies.
* Up to 3 volunteering days per year.
* Recognition vouchers scheme rewarding your hard work.
* Generous shared parental leave and pay supporting your family life.
Follow the link to apply for full details about the role. Please ensure you have submitted your application in full before the below deadline.
Ofwat is recognised as an Official Sensitive department and a Security Check (SC) is a requirement for this role. Applicants are normally expected to have been resident in the UK for the last five years to meet the standard residency requirements for SC clearance. Successful candidates must obtain SC clearance to a standard satisfactory to Ofwat within the first six months of employment
Closing date: 23.55 on 01 November 2026
