Principal Applications Operations Engineer (4849)

Job summary

Drive the digital infrastructure at the heart of Scotland’s property market and help shape the future of energy performance certification.

Join the Heat in Buildings Assessment Register Team within the Scottish Government as the Team Leader, leading the operation and development of the digital, statutory Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Register. The team is responsible for ensuring the effective delivery of a critical national digital service that supports property transactions, government schemes, climate change reporting and wider Heat in Buildings policy, while delivering the most significant EPC reforms in Scotland for over 17 years.

You will lead the operational oversight of the Scottish EPC Register, ensuring it remains a high-performing, customer-focused digital service that meets the needs of users across the property and energy sectors. The role's key objective is to provide strategic leadership for this nationally important, public-facing digital asset, supporting ongoing service improvement, future legislative requirements, and the successful delivery of Scotland's energy efficiency and climate ambitions.

Job description

• Manage configuration items, related information, service compliance, and risks; ensure the correct implementation of standards and procedures; and identify and mitigate risks and issues.

• Analyse current processes and identify, establish, and implement opportunities to optimise them, leading a Senior Product Manager and Senior Operations Lead to deliver service improvements.

• Be responsible for the overall governance of live service management, both through suppliers and in-house.

• Co-ordinate the team to investigate problems, implement solutions, and take preventive measures.

• Deliver a model to support and maintain future technologies and any databases that coexist within the current environment.

• Demonstrate a thorough understanding of the technical concepts required for the role and explain how these fit into the wider technical landscape.

• Manage testing, risk, and customer relations workstreams.

• Prioritise and define approaches to understand the user story, guiding others in doing so.

Person specification

Success profile:Success profiles are specific to each job and they include the mix of behaviours, experience and technical criteria that candidates will be assessed on.

Experience:

• Significant experience of working at the interface between operational delivery and designing and delivering new infrastructure and services to support the development of new policy and regulations.
• Extensive demonstrable experience in managing risk, business continuity, disaster recovery and innovation.
• Previous experience working with cloud service providers, particularly AWS, is highly desirable. AWS certifications would be advantageous but are not mandatory.
• Extensive expert-level knowledge of applying standards associated with national and international IT best practice, including experience of accreditation and compliance, and ensuring that these standards are applied when delivering innovative, secure, and cost-effective business services.

Behaviours:

• Managing a quality service – Level 4
• Leadership – Level 4

You can find out more about Success Profiles Behaviours here:

Technical Skills:

This role is aligned to the Application Operations Engineer in the Government Data and Technology Profession.

These skills will be tested during the Technical Assessment if you are successful at sift stage. They will be not be assessed at application stage. Please review the following to understand the skill expectations: Application operations engineer - Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Managing a Quality Service
• Leadership

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £62,111, Scottish Government contributes £17,993 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.Assessments are scheduled for w/c 30 November 2026; however, this may be subject to change.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a basic (or equivalent) criminal record check.People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : Stacey Mcfarlane
• Email : stacey.mcfarlane@gov.scot

Recruitment team

• Email : scottishgovernmentrecruitment@gov.scot