DevOps Engineer

Job Title: DevOps Engineer (Grade 7) - 18 Month Fixed Term Contract

Location: Service Headquarters, Tovil, Maidstone, ME15 6XB - Hybrid working with minimum 3 days per week in the office

Hours: Full Time - 37 Hours per Week,

Pension: Automatic membership of the Local Government Pension Scheme - career average pension scheme with 16.5% employer contribution

Holidays: In addition to bank/ public holidays you will receive 32 days holiday

Base Salary: £44,575 - £50,423 per annum depending on experience

Reference: R001079

Being a part of Kent Fire and Rescue Service

Everyone is unique. Everyone has value. Everyone helps to make Kent Fire and Rescue Service (KFRS) a great place to work. We are one team. Together with our customers we are creating a safer future for Kent and Medway.

Our vision is for a connected, resilient and intelligence-led service: one that understands risk earlier, makes confident decisions and equips our people to deliver outstanding outcomes for our customers. Joining us at this defining point offers the opportunity to turn strategic ambition into practical, lasting change. We are looking for talented, purposeful people who can connect strategy with delivery, bring clarity to complexity and build trusted relationships across the service

Being the DevOps Engineer

The DevOps Engineer will improve efficiency, reliability and consistency of IT delivery operations through automation, modern engineering practices, improved tooling and effective collaboration. You will work in a mixed technology environment and will need to work pragmatically across existing platforms, processes and teams.

The successful candidate as DevOps Engineer will distinguish improvements that can be standardised and those where a different approach is justified. You will influence colleagues through technical credibility, collaboration and coaching.

What you’ll do

• Identify, prioritise and deliver opportunities to automate manual, repetitive or error-prone IT processes, with a focus on measurable reduction in operational effort
• Design, implement and maintain automation, scripting, pipelines, tooling and engineering practices that improve reliability, repeatability and efficiency
• Support adoption of modern DevOps and engineering practices, including source control, automated testing, deployment automation, configuration management, monitoring and repeatable release processes where appropriate
• Ensure automation and engineering changes comply with relevant security, architecture, change, service management and operational controls
• Produce clear documentation and operational ownership for automation and tooling, including monitoring, failure handling, support arrangements and knowledge transfer

What you’ll bring

• Demonstrable experience of using automation or scripting to improve technology operations or software delivery.
• Relevant technical qualification, professional qualification or demonstrable equivalent experience in IT, software engineering, infrastructure or a related discipline
• Relevant DevOps, cloud, automation or engineering certification. - Desirable
• IT service management or change-management qualification or demonstrable equivalent knowledge. - Desirable
• Experience identifying manual or repetitive work and replacing or simplifying it through technology or process improvement.
• Experience implementing technical changes in a controlled production environment.
• Experience supporting or maintaining automation after implementation, including handling failures and operational exceptions.
• Experience delivering automation across endpoint, infrastructure or cloud-management platforms. - Desirable
• Experience working with Intune, MECM, Azure, Microsoft 365 or similar enterprise technology platforms - Desirable

Benefits

• Automatic membership of the Local Government Pension Scheme
• Enhanced Annual Leave entitlement
• Annual Salary increase - Increase of 1 scale point per year within Grade to the top of the Grade.
• Blue Light Card discount scheme supported by a number of high street retailers
• CSSC Card - Discount provider for civil servants and public sector workers
• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) - Confidential support service designed to help manage personal or work-related issues that may affect health, wellbeing, or job performance.
• A range of family friendly policies promoting work-life balance
• Free to join internal clubs and colleague forums
• Access to health and wellbeing services and advice
• Access to Gym Facilities
• Free parking
• Above all you’ll become part of a service that is committed to the safety of our community

How to apply

Please complete an online application and CV by 29th October 2026

Interviews will take on 3rd, 4th, 6th or 10th November 2026.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy upon receiving a sufficient number of applications. If you are interested in this role, we recommend that you submit your application at the earliest opportunity.

Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do. We know that great minds don’t think alike, so we rely on diverse thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and backgrounds to create the best working environment that we can possibly offer.

Kent Fire and Rescue Service, its employees, and volunteers are committed to safeguarding, protecting, and supporting children, young people, and adults at risk. As part of our safer recruitment process, we will undertake pre-employment checks to verify your suitability for the role. These checks will include your references and a standard or enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. Enhanced DBS check with barred lists are carried out for roles with direct and unsupervised access to children, young people, and adults at risk. Risk assessments will be undertaken on any disclosures identified as part of the pre-employment checks.

As a Public Sector organisation with added responsibilities under the Equality Act, 2010 the candidate must demonstrate an understanding of what is meant by Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion and how this fits in with their everyday work.