DevOps Apprentice

Hours: Full time 
Contract Type: Fixed Term (2 years)
Location: Science and Technology Facilities Council, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Harwell, Oxfordshire 
Closing date: 16th February 2025


Come and do amazing work whilst following a structured learning programme that develops not just your capabilities but also your confidence to thrive and grow in the workplace. Work alongside world-leading scientists and technologists, shape projects that improve lives, and daily life, in the UK and far beyond. Put simply, come and discover the impact you can make when you’re equipped, encouraged and inspired to achieve your very best. We are recruiting Level 4 DevOps Apprentices to join our Scientific Computing Department at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire. 
 
STFC's Scientific Computing Department (SCD) is one of the UK’s leading centres of expertise in data-intensive science, and home to sophisticated high-performance hardware. It is one of the largest departments of its kind with over 200 computational scientists, software engineers and project support staff – and it is steadily growing as the demand for more research data management, storage and analytics increases at a pace.  We have cutting-edge skills and expertise in scientific software research and development, and world-leading capabilities in 'big data' storage and analysis, visualisation and simulation, and scientific information management.  
 
Scientific computing is fundamental to modern research. This broad and rapidly advancing field involves utilising advanced computing capabilities to understand and solve complex problems in science. SCD supports some of the UK's most advanced scientific facilities and provides the tools that enable the scientific community to discover and deliver vital research.  
 
The DevOps Apprentice will gain first-hand experience working as part of a professional team, supported by theoretical and practical learning. You will have the opportunity to make an impact early on in your role. You’ll also get to learn the specialist skills tailored to the knowledge, skills and behaviours required as a computing professional.  
 
About the Apprenticeship
 
With training and support from experts in their fields, you’ll be enthusiastic about developing your knowledge, skills and behaviours, working towards completing your apprenticeship, gaining appropriate qualifications whilst making a real difference in your role.
 
If working with innovative technologies on world-leading research isn’t enough, you will develop both professionally and as a critical member of the team in an environment you won’t find anywhere else.
 
Our dedicated Apprenticeship Team will support you every step of the way, helping you make the most of your opportunities and to achieve the goals you already have – and those you have yet to discover!
 
We provide an opportunity to really pursue your interests and passion. You’ll have access to additional core skills development, access to a community of apprentices across the site, annual Apprentice awards evenings, a number of active sport and social groups across campus, and potential opportunities for overseas placements.
 
STFC offers a benefits package crafted to provide an excellent work/life balance including 30 days’ annual leave, an outstanding index linked pension scheme, 10.5 public and privilege days, Christmas closure and flexible working hours.
 

About the role and a summary of key duties & responsibilities 
 
STFC’s internal cloud platform provides tens of thousands of CPU cores and hundreds of GPUs to scientists and engineers working on STFC and UKRI projects. You’ll either work on a key production service which uses the platform, or directly on improving the platform. A variety of services use OpenStack, an open source infrastructure-as-a-service platform, to provide virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, large-scale storage and other services. You will have the opportunity to improve existing features, develop and deploy new internal and external tools, and work on enterprise hardware including monitoring and alerting.
 
The Grid Services Team oversees a variety of services that allow RAL to offer computing support to numerous scientific experiments worldwide. Grid Computing is a distributed computing model that connects multiple, geographically dispersed, computers over the Internet to share resources like processing power and storage. By pooling these resources, it enables the collaborative processing of large-scale computational tasks more efficiently than a single machine or local cluster. You will have the opportunity to work directly on several of these services and improve their performance by implementing dedicated powerful monitoring pipelines.
 
You will also have the opportunity to meet and collaborate with other departments and apprentices during your apprenticeship too.
 
Responsibilities will include: 

• Working on maintenance and development of production and development environments 
• Working with users on issues and deployments  
• Adapting workloads to work on virtual machines and containers
• Developing and improving documentation for users and team members
• Adapting and developing training exercises on various aspects of our facilities. 
• Building and maintaining Docker containers using automation
• Investigating and providing feedback on new services and applications, and technologies
• Building and improving continuous integration and deployment pipelines for software, containers, and configuration managed infrastructure.
• Developing software and automations to deliver a robust and adaptable service 
• Working on monitoring production environments
• Working with a Linux system environment 
   

Alongside this, you will undertake professional development and training as part of a cohort of computing apprentices with Estio Training on the Level 4 DevOps Engineer Apprenticeship
 
The modules you will complete, combined with real-world projects and experience, will provide you with the knowledge and skills to perform in a DevOps role.  
 
Sessions will be delivered online once per month in 2-to-3-day blocks via a live Virtual Learning Environment. You will also be supported on a 1:1 basis throughout your apprenticeship by a dedicated Technical Coach and a breadth of knowledge from the wider team.
 
You will be supported on a 1:1 basis to prepare you for your End Point Assessment. The End Point Assessment will include the completion of a Workplace Project to enable you to demonstrate the required Knowledge, Behaviours and Skills followed by a Professional Discussion with the British Computing Society (BCS).  
  

Person Specification

In order to apply for the role, we are looking for the following:

Key - (S) will be measured at shortlisting, (I) will be measured at interview, (S&I) is both.

Essential:

• Achieved GCSE (or equivalent) passes at Grade C/4 or above in Maths & English (S)
• Level 3 qualifications such as:
  2 A Levels (A-C)
  BTEC Level 3
  T-Level or a previous Level 3 Apprenticeship. (Please give subjects and results in CV)
• Good written communication skills as demonstrated in your CV and cover letter (S)
• Some knowledge of and enthusiasm for computer hardware and/or software (S&I) 
• Your CV and/or cover letter should give example(s) of personal or school projects that involved learning about and using a computer system and what you enjoyed (S)
• As a minimum a successful candidate will be able to describe the basic components of a computer system , describe basic software development concepts and/or be aware of the range of computer operating systems and what they are   (I)
• Desire to work in a scientific computing environment (S&I) 
• Your cover letter should explain why you have applied for this computing apprenticeship scheme and any activities you are involved in to help you develop personally and professionally   (S)
• Ability to examine evidence and data to understand it and solve problems (I)
• As a minimum, a successful candidate will be able to work systematically through straightforward problems, examine data, and link it to their understanding of computer systems in order find the cause of problems  (S&I)
• Excellent communication skills and ability to work in a team (S&I) 
• Technical requirements (I) 
• An aptitude and desire to identify and automate repeated tasks for efficiency and accuracy  (S&I)
• Passion in programming to develop, implement and improve applications  (S&I)
• Programming skill is scripting language such as Bash, Python, Ansible, PowerShell, or Perl for interacting with our services and devices    (S&I

Desirable: 

• A flair for communicating in clear, positive terms; understanding that helping staff of all abilities understand problems and solutions is central to successful customer service (I) 
• Experience in customer facing roles such as retail, hospitality etc or examples of how you’ve helped others in personal, professional or educational settings. (SI) 
  A/AS/BTEC/T level or equivalent in computing or other technical discipline (S) 
• Please give subjects and expected results on CV  

Important Information

1. To complete the apprenticeship, you will need to evidence passes at 9-4 or A*-C in GCSE (or equivalent) Maths and English. For those sitting their GSCEs in Summer 2025, we would need evidence of your predicted grades.
2. When applying for an apprenticeship, there is a set residency eligibility criteria that must be met by the applicant. 
3. The training provider will also ask you to complete an initial assessment during the application process. If you already have a qualification in this subject area or similar please include, as an attachment, your transcript outlining the grade/s achieved and modules covered.  By applying for this apprenticeship, you are giving permission for your details to be shared with the relevant training provider. 

Please note that we hold the right to close this vacancy early if a sufficient number of applications have been received.  

What could you achieve with the world-leading facilities and experts of one of Europe’s largest research organisations by your side? 

Join us and discover what’s possible!