We caught up with Scott to learn how his interest in technology eventually led him on a path to a career switch to become a DevOps Engineer at the Home Office.
I’ve always had an interest in tech. When I was younger, I liked messing around with programming languages, but I didn’t initially go into tech as a career. Instead, I spent 15 years working as a gym instructor and personal trainer. I trained people in all sorts of places, from commercial gyms to my own private warehouse space, on tour buses with celebrities, and even through online personal training. To help promote my personal training business, I taught myself how to build websites and apps and I realised I was enjoying the tech side more than the fitness side, which started me on the path to my career switch.
A friend of mine who works as a DevOps Engineer got me thinking about that role as a potential route into tech. I found what he was doing / the projects he was working on were really interesting and he suggested I give it a go. I started teaching myself the basics such as understanding Linux and getting to grips with cloud platforms as well as working my way through a lot of online learning platforms like Plurasight and A Cloud Guru. This mix of structured courses and hands-on trial-and-error really helped me to build the skills and confidence I needed to make the switch into tech and when I felt ready, I applied for the Associate DevOps Engineer job at the Home Office and was successful. It was one of those ‘right place, right time kind of opportunities’ that I was looking for, landing a role for an organisation that would support my learning and development with the opportunities to work my way up the career ladder.
Creating digital environments to help improve services
I’m based in the Glasgow office, working in His Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO) as a DevOps/Platforms Engineer and most of my team are spread out across the UK in places like Manchester, Sheffield and London. Even though we work in different locations, we stay connected through daily stand-ups, video calls, and tools like Jira and Slack. It feels very collaborative, and there is always someone around to jump on a call to help you work through a problem.
Most of my work sees me creating digital environments for other teams throughout the Home Office to enable them to develop and test their services. I’ve worked with teams like Civil Registration Product Family and Life Events Verification to keep their firewalls up to date which blocks unauthorised access from hackers, malicious software and defend against cyber-attacks. I’ve also worked with these same teams to set up secure access for new APIs and third-party partners to allow them to build, test, and improve our services safely and efficiently, whilst ensuring everything continues to run as it should. These aren’t the parts of a service people usually see, but without them the public-facing systems wouldn’t run as smoothly. Knowing that my work helps keep important services reliable for the people who need them is one of the most rewarding parts of the job.
I’ve also had the opportunity to work with the latest tech tools, furthering my knowledge of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, Jenkins, Kubernetes and other tools to build and look after the infrastructure so it’s reliable and secure. It’s not something people usually think about when they think “Home Office”, but the tech side is modern.
On-the-job learning within a welcoming environment
There’s a lot of on-the-job learning here at the Home Office. I’m encouraged to take on projects even if I’m not totally sure how to do them because I know the team will help me if I get stuck. My manager has also been great at pushing me to take on more training, so I’ve been working through AWS certifications alongside my day-to-day work.
If you like problem-solving, have a good attitude and are willing to learn, you can build a career in tech at the Home Office. I didn’t have the traditional ‘technical’ background, but I’ve worked hard and used my transferable skills to develop and grow my tech career in such a welcoming environment.
