HMRC is building a modern, digital tax administration and runs the biggest digital operation in Government, providing digital services for 45 million individuals and 4.9 million business customers. Our digital programme is multi-award winning and the envy of other government organisations.

We are undergoing a major transformation programme, which includes a major investment in digitisation. This means customers can do more for themselves online, in real time, on computers, tablets and smartphones therefore we are building a team of outstanding people who will create and run these new and improved technology services.

This is a great opportunity to join HMRC’s IT function Chief Digital Information Office (CDIO) which sets the technology direction for HMRC and delivers the high-level design for all IT solutions across the Organisation. CDIO are responsible for building and running HMRC IT services along with providing IT change and operational support.

As part of CDIO, the Customs Borders International Delivery Area are responsible for developing, delivering and supporting IT solutions for those business areas which manage HMRC’s Customs, Excise and International Trade activities.

The Customs Borders & International (CB&I) Delivery Area are responsible for the end to end service management and development of over 100 separate services from the generation of Trade Statistics, to the administration of Customs and Excise duties.

We will maintain and monitor the new Customs Declaration Service (CDS), GVMS (Goods Vehicle Movement System) and several key systems all of which are monitored 24/7 365 days of the year.

You will line manage a small team (possibly in several locations) who will be expected to assist projects to evaluate what monitoring is needed. You will be responsible for their upskilling, training and all HR requirements.

You are a key member of the delivery team, collaborating with all members throughout the full delivery lifecycle to ensure delivery of highest-quality monitoring solutions.

This role is fundamental in ensuring Operations & Monitoring Guild is able to proactively identify and progress significant IT failures or performance issues which may affect HMRC end users ability to carry out their work or experience utilising the services.

Your team will monitor these systems and ensure that quick action is taken to raise an incident so that resolution of the issue can be investigated and resolved to ensure goods and services are not delayed.

You will be self-motivated with a good understanding of the monitoring tools. You will need to be able to understand what is monitored on the current services, if there are any gaps and enhancements needs.

You will also establish pro-active monitoring as projects and systems evolve. You will need to attend any live readiness meetings and sign off any monitoring requirements, ensuring they are fit for purpose and clearly show about the alerting process and the resolver groups assist with this. You need to maintain a good relationship with Service Management and assist with any live service requirements and any issues in the transition to live support are addressed.

You will need to provide any reports or critical information to assist with incidents and assist the team and the service management team or resolver teams.

The post holder will be expected to work occasionally from the BCP site, to test and maintain facilities at that site.


Responsibilities • Continual real-time monitoring of the CB&I estate, using a variety of monitoring tools available to Operations & Monitoring Guild.

• Attend Live Service Readiness meetings.

• Regular maintenance and improvement of the dashboard tooling and configuration.

• Real time monitoring of incidents via ServiceNow, a call logging platform.

• Retrospective trending and analysis of incidents raised to identify underlying IT issues which may have gone unnoticed or are manifesting slowly. Extract reports on request for review on a specific service if their user base is complaining of IT problems.

• Maintain the JIRA board/Diary adding new issues and work items which should be progressed through to resolution. Ensure that all areas of the Guild are updated.

• Engage in daily stand ups with all sides of the guild and ensure any emails/diary entries/guides are produced by your team all issues/observations are highlighted to all shifts.

• Provide support to project and the team to support proactive monitoring.

• Sign off any monitoring requirements.

• Provide guidance on monitoring issues with team or projects.

• Assist with any issues from Opsview including licensing, upgrades and security certificates. Your role will include engaging with CB&I licensing team and Commerce Team to ensure licenses cover requirements and are dealt with yearly.

• Carry out activities in incident, problem, change and configuration management to ensure monitoring is in place and effective.

Essential Criteria

You will have :

• Ability to consider the connections to points in new and existing services and discuss effective monitor to support live services and trader facing points.

• Proven problem-solving skills.

• Proven team working ability - It is essential to share skills and knowledge across the shifts.

• Proven live management skills or ability to lead a team.

• Proven communication and engagement skills.

• Ability to use analytical skills to improve monitoring.

• Proven IT experience and skills in monitoring and use of various monitoring tools.

• Self-motivation.

Desirable Criteria

Ideally you will also have experience in the use of some or all the following:

• Monitoring tools e.g. Opsview, Nagios, Kibana, Sensu and AppDynamics.

• Unix/Linux training 

Candidates will either have SC level security clearance or be willing to undertake such.