Site Reliability Engineer (Covert Capability)

MI5 - The Security Service

Greater London, UK

On-Site

Expires: Expiring in less than 4 weeks

Flexible

£44,190 - £52,972 per year

Job summary

MI5 keeps the country safe from serious threats like terrorism and attempts by states to harm the UK, its people and way of life. We carry out investigations by obtaining, analysing, and assessing intelligence, and then work with a range of partners including MI6 and GCHQ to disrupt these threats. Through our protective security arm, we provide advice and guidance to government, businesses and other organisations about how to keep themselves safe. A role in MI5 means you'll do unique and challenging work in a supportive and encouraging environment, making a real difference to UK national security.

Job description

As a Site Reliability Engineer, you’ll design, build, deploy and maintain the infrastructure that enables critical cyber activity. Working in a highly technical environment, you’ll ensure the systems others depend on are secure, reliable and fit for purpose. Using a blend of cutting-edge and bespoke technologies, including internally developed systems you won’t find elsewhere, you’ll solve complex, mission-critical challenges.

This is an engineering-led role where you’ll play a key part in delivering and managing infrastructure through code, operating in fully code-driven environments. Using tools such as Kubernetes, infrastructure as code and automation frameworks, you’ll develop and manage production environments that support operational activity. You’ll oversee deployments end to end, manage upgrades and changes, and ensure systems remain stable and available without disruption, maintaining continuity of service.

Monitoring is central to the role. You’ll track system health, performance and behaviour using logs and metrics, identifying risks and weaknesses before they impact service. When issues arise, you’ll investigate root causes and contribute to improvements that strengthen reliability and prevent recurrence.

Day to day, you’ll work closely with engineers, developers and researchers to deploy new capabilities and improve existing systems. You’ll collaborate with monitoring teams to respond to system concerns and ensure environments remain secure and resilient. Alongside this, you’ll contribute to improving how systems are managed, refining processes and strengthening reliability practices as systems evolve.

Operating within a small, specialist team in a wider delivery environment, you’ll have the autonomy to influence how production systems are managed and delivered. This is a hands-on engineering role focused on ensuring systems are robust, consistently available and capable of supporting critical operational activity.

Person specification

You’re an experienced engineer with a strong background in building, deploying and maintaining software or infrastructure in production environments. Your experience may come from site reliability engineering, DevOps or a similar role, and you’ll be used to working with complex systems where reliability, performance and security are critical.

You bring hands-on experience managing systems through their full lifecycle, including deploying, upgrading and maintaining services in live environments without disruption. You’re confident working in code-driven environments, using approaches such as infrastructure as code and automation to deliver and manage infrastructure.

You’ll have practical experience using Kubernetes to deploy and manage services in production environments. You’ll also have working knowledge of scripting or programming languages such as Python and be comfortable working in Linux-based environments.

You understand how systems behave in production, using logs, metrics and monitoring tools to assess health, identify issues and improve performance. You take a structured and methodical approach to your work, ensuring systems are stable, repeatable and well managed.

You’re able to understand complex systems and how different components interact and can communicate this clearly to others. You work effectively with engineers and supporting teams, ensuring systems are well documented and delivered to a consistent standard.

Benefits

When you join, you’ll receive an induction to the team, systems and ways of working, helping you understand how the infrastructure you support fits into the wider operational environment.

Your personal development in this role is continuous and grounded in practice. You’ll build your expertise by working directly with complex systems, contributing to deployments, monitoring environments and responding to real-world challenges. Alongside this, you’ll have dedicated time to explore emerging technologies, keeping your skills current and identifying opportunities to improve future capability.

You’ll be supported through a structured technical framework aligned to the Cyber Technical Framework, helping you progress as a specialist engineer or move into leadership. Whichever path you choose, you’ll receive significant investment in your development, including funded external courses, certifications and technical bootcamps.

You’ll also have access to a Dedicated Development Budget and Personal Development Time, giving you the flexibility to pursue self-directed learning aligned to your goals. Opportunities to gain industry-recognised certifications and learn from leading specialists across the intelligence community will further support your development.

Rewards and benefits
You’ll receive a starting salary of £44,190 to £52,972 depending on skills and accreditation, plus other benefits including:

25 Days Annual Leave automatically rising to 30 days after 5 years' service, and an additional 10.5 days public and privilege holidays
opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme
dedicated development budget
interest-free season ticket loan
excellent pension scheme
cycle to work scheme
facilities such as a gym, restaurant, and on-site coffee bars (at some locations)
paid parental and adoption leave

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

Our recruitment process is fair, transparent, and based on merit. Here is a brief overview of each stage, in order:

An initial online application form including pre-screening questions to ensure you meet our eligibility criteria.
Online Situational Judgement Test (SJT) in which you rate the appropriateness of responses to a series of short scenarios.
A full online application form, assessed at application sift, where we will review your motivation for the role and MI5.
Online competency-based interview which will also consider your motivation for the role.
In-person technical interview.
If successful, you’ll receive a conditional offer of employment.

Please note, you must successfully pass each stage of the process to progress to the next. Your application may take around 6 to 9 months to process including vetting, so we advise you continue any current employment until you have received your final job offer.

Equal opportunities
At MI5 diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission. To protect the UK, we need a truly diverse workforce that reflects the society we serve. This includes diversity in every sense of the word: those with different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, ways of thinking and those with disabilities or neurodivergent conditions. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including those from groups that are under-represented in our workforce such as women, those from an ethnic minority background, people with disabilities and those from low socio-economic backgrounds.

Find out more about our culture, working environment and diversity on our website.

We’re Disability Confident
MI5 is proud to have achieved Leader status within the Department for Work and Pensions' Disability Confident scheme. This is aimed at encouraging employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people. As a Disability Confident Leader, we aim to ensure that a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants who best meet the essential minimum criteria for this position, will be offered an interview, if it is practical for us to do so. (This is known as the Offer of an Interview.) To secure an interview for this role, the minimum criteria (in order of application process) are:

You'll be required to reach the minimum pass mark for the online Situational Judgement Test (SJT), which assesses criteria important for all roles in our organisation
The ability to build, deploy and maintain systems in live production, with clear evidence of managing reliability, performance, and security in complex environments.
Practical expertise with using Kubernetes to run services in production and working in fully code-driven environments
The ability to monitor systems using logs/metrics, troubleshoot issues, perform root cause analysis, and implement improvements to ensure stability, uptime, and continuous service availability.

There is a wide range of extra support available throughout the recruitment process to enable you to do your best, see our website for information on reasonable adjustments we can offer.

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

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is developed vetting (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

Open to UK nationals only.

Working for the Civil Service

Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission.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

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Contact point for applicants

Salary range

£44,190 - £52,972 per year