Senior DevOps Engineer

Job Description

Job Title: Senior DevOps Engineer

Posting Start Date: 28/10/2025

Job Id: 1757

School/Department: IT Services

Work Arrangement: Full Time (Hybrid)

Contract Type: Permanent

Salary per annum (£): £48,822 - £65,509

Closing Date: 12/11/2025

The University of Sheffield is a remarkable place to work. Our people are at the heart of everything we do. Their diverse backgrounds, abilities and beliefs make Sheffield a world-class university.

We offer a fantastic range of benefits including a highly competitive annual leave entitlement (with the ability to purchase more), a generous pensions scheme, flexible working opportunities, a commitment to your development and wellbeing, a wide range of retail discounts, and much more.

Overview

IT Services at the University of Sheffield provide a full range of complex IT and technology-enabled services that support education, research, workplace, corporate services and infrastructure enablers to all our staff and students. This large and highly innovative department is undergoing a significant amount of change as it establishes itself as a key enterprise IT partner that works across the University, with stakeholders and key partners to deliver enterprise-wide products and services in line with strategic aims.

Our main focus for the future is:

• Build more services in AWS and increase our automation for server setup and code deployments
• Improve resilience in the design of our services and hosting to deal with more recent challenges and threats to our services
• Put in place good practice to help our developers with designing and hosting systems in better ways

Main duties and responsibilities

Our team's responsibilities include:

• Providing DevOps support to developers across the department. Manage and develop Continuous Integration pipelines and tooling, including Jenkins, Github Enterprise and Jira
• Work across our on premise and AWS estate
• Designing and maintaining the hosting for a number of critical systems including our single sign on infrastructure, student record system and integration tooling.
• Designing, implementing and managing the hosting of all systems run by the team so they are resilient and performant enough for our 40,000+ staff and student users (plus the general public who use our systems too)
• Automating deployment processes where we can to ensure reliable deployments to production services
• Configuration of servers using Apache, NGINX, PulseSecure Virtual Traffic Managers, Tomcat, Oracle technologies and a range of other technologies as required
• Learning about the latest tools, techniques and frameworks and share that knowledge with other teams we collaborate with
• Designing and planning the future direction of our infrastructure and hosting platforms
• You may be required to carry out other duties, commensurate with the grade and remit of the post.

Person Specification

Our diverse community of staff and students recognises the unique abilities, backgrounds, and beliefs of all. We foster a culture where everyone feels they belong and is respected. Even if your past experience doesn't match perfectly with this role's criteria, your contribution is valuable, and we encourage you to apply. Please ensure that you reference the application criteria in the application statement when you apply.

Criteria

Essential or desirable

Stage(s) assessed at

Have a good honours degree in a related subject area or equivalent qualifications (or equivalent experience)

Essential

Application

Experience of designing and running resilient web systems on Linux, AWS and Terraform

Essential

Application, Interview and selection task

Automated build and deployment experience with tools like Jenkins or GitHub Actions

Essential

Application, Interview and selection task

Understanding of network and security concepts such as HTTP, TLS, load balancing, DNS etc in an on premise and AWS environment

Essential

Application, Interview and selection task

Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence and persuade and the ability to build internal and external networks

Essential

Application and Interview

Ability to work with people with a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds across formal team boundaries

Essential

Application and Interview

Ability to resolve problems using own creative solutions, with an appreciation of longer-term implications

Essential

Application and Interview

Ability to learn new technologies, techniques and best practice quickly and effectively

Essential

Application and Interview

Ability to provide support and mentoring for more junior members of the team

Essential

Application and Interview

Software development experience

Desirable

Application, Interview and selection task

Further Information

Grade

8

Salary

£48,822-£58,225 per annum with the potential to progress to £65,509 through sustained exceptional contribution

Work arrangement

Full-time

Line manager

DevOps Team Leader

Direct reports

None

Our website

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For informal enquiries about this job contact Adrian Jones, DevOps Team Leader: at

Next steps in the recruitment process

We plan to let candidates know if they have progressed to the selection stage within two weeks of the closing date. If you need any support, equipment or adjustments to enable you to participate in any element of the recruitment process you can contact it-services-

Our vision and strategic plan

We are the University of Sheffield. This is our vision: ().

What we offer

• A minimum of 41days annual leave including bank holiday and closure days (pro rata) with the ability to purchase more.
• Flexible working opportunities, including hybrid working for some roles.
• Generous pension scheme.
• A wide range of discounts and rewards on shopping, eating out and travel.
• A variety of staff networks, providing opportunities for social interaction, peer support and personal development (for example, Race Equality, LGBT+, Women's and Parent's networks).
• Recognition Awards to reward staff who go above and beyond in their role.
• A commitment to your development access to learning and mentoring schemes.
• A range of generous family-friendly policies
• paid time off for parenting and caring emergencies
• support for those going through the menopause
• paid time off and support for fertility treatment
• and more

We are a Disability Confident Employer. If you have a disability and meet the essential criteria for this job you will be invited to take part in the next stage of the selection process.

Criminal record

A basic DBS check will be needed for this role. More details on the checks can be found on the Government website: (opens in a new window).

Possession of a criminal record is not an automatic bar to employment at the University of Sheffield. We recognise the value of steady employment in the rehabilitation process and examine each case in its own right. More information can be found on our Information for candidates page:- (opens in a new window).

Closing Date : 12/11/2025

We are a research university with a global reputation for excellence. Our ideas and expertise change the world for the better, making a real difference to society. We know that when people come together with different views, approaches and insights it can lead to richer, more creative and innovative teaching and research and the highest levels of student experience. Our University Vision ) outlines our commitment to building a diverse community of staff and students that recognises and values the abilities, backgrounds, beliefs and ways of living for everyone.