Department for International Development
Job summary
Changes are happening at UK Home Office we are not just about entry gates at Airports or issuing passports. We have over 30 different agencies and public bodies, including Policing and Counter Terrorism and with everyone using digital device’s technology is changing massively, we are bringing services in house, and it�s a big challenge.
You could be designing and building solutions to help people prove their identity or apply for visas or working on the critical IT systems that support policing and counter terrorism and help protect UK borders. Our success in this role depends on our ability to exploit the latest technologies to create leading-edge, world class solutions whilst ensuring they are secure and resilient.
Our work is guided by these fundamental principles:
� Put user needs first
� Delivery and outcomes over process
� Make the most of openness: open standards, open source, open data and open markets
It�s important that we build a diverse workforce that reflects the society we serve and provide an inclusive environment for all. We value everyone’s skills and provide a creative and supportive workplace to help you do your best work and develop your career.
Here are a couple of online guides on what we do
Job description
We�re passionate about building software that solves problems. We�re home to some of the most important public services in the United Kingdom and are transforming how we use data and technology to improve these. Our software has been used to stop terrorist attacks, ensure applications and delivery of passports is efficient and developing and supporting a wide variety of GOV.UK services such as getting married or forming a civil partnership or applying for a visa.
As a Senior Developer you will be working with modern technologies in cloud -based environments with other skilled people, collaborating and making things work for our end users, in some cases that�s the public and in others our own people who work at the Borders, Immigration or protecting the public.
We develop over 560 services which have millions of users worldwide.
Areas of the work which you may need to get involved with (from a software engineering perspective) include
� Building and maintaining wide variety of gov.uk services you may be familiar with, including getting married or forming a civil partnership or applying for a visa
� Ensuring that the application and delivery of passports is efficient – completing the build of our award-winning digital application system
� Re-developing core policing data systems to ensure they are effective and provide a solid basis for innovation
� Updating tools to ensure that our borders are efficient for both passengers and border officials
� Ensuring that we have a world-class immigration system which is usable by all
If these types of projects excite you, we’d love for you to join us.
What we offer
We know that great software requires great coding practices. Here are some key practices which we insist upon across our teams that allow us to release with speed and quality.
� Agile principles
� Test-driven development with a focus on automation
� Continuous integration and continuous delivery
� Review code via pull requests
� Pairing smartly
� Infrastructure as code
Free Online Event�– Join us and hear from the Home Office Software Engineering team about our organisation, roles and recruitment process. Thursday, 08th June 2023 12:00 – 13:00 BST
Great work life balance!�We offer a lot of autonomy and flexible working patterns that can be agreed based on your personal needs. We currently have a hybrid working model from home with an expectation to be in the office from time to time for team activities which is agreed locally (current minimum is 40% in the office).
Person specification
This is a really exciting opportunity, you�ll be working on triaging �new stuff�, as well as leading the implementation of new systems in a number of really critical areas. This work will be delivered in an agile manner, working with multi-disciplinary teams and across a variety of business areas.
As a Senior Developer you�ll take ownership over the products, features and services your team looks after, being curious at heart with a desire to make things better. You�ll prioritise the focus on being one team with a passion for nurturing, coaching and sharing your knowledge with others whilst ensuring high quality code is delivered in line with project goals and delivery cycles and thrive using agile methods.
Your key areas of impact will be
� Delivering secure, reliable and scalable software and supporting your team with technical tasks when needed
� Evaluating and advising on design choices and ensuring that software is high quality and balances technical and business considerations
� Defining and documenting test cases for new systems and maintaining live systems to ensure ongoing performance
� Acting as a digital ambassador, supporting recruitment, identifying good practices for Home Office to adopt and sharing experiences, e.g. through blog posts, tech talks at conferences etc.
� Evolving new approaches/solutions with other professions through discoveries, maintain a focus on development and deployment
� Helping prioritise and direct technical tasks across your team, to balance new and live services
This is a senior developer role. You’ll work with seniors and principals whilst coaching and mentor mid-level and associate (junior) engineers. You will occasionally be expected to assist with the recruitment process for new colleagues.
Like most businesses we need to maintain our services 24/7, therefore, on occasion there may be a requirement to work out of hours, for which you will be paid
Essential Criteria
Home Office really are about investing in people, if you have the coding skills and have experience of a product focussed agile, multi-disciplinary environment then we would be very pleased to hear from you.
You’ll be a developer who is confident developing applications, passionate about making a difference and want to be involved throughout the product lifecycle, from idea generation, design, and prototyping to execution, and shipping whilst having experience with:
� Developing Java based micro services
� Designing and developing RESTful APIs
� Databases and DB technology (RDBMS, NoSQL etc.)
� Working practices such as test driven development (focusing on automation), continuous integration and continuous delivery
� A cloud-based approach, selecting cloud components and defining infrastructure as code to integrate them (Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, and/or Google Cloud etc.)
� Working with an agile environment
� Taking projects from inception through to delivery by being involved in the full software development lifecycle
The skills listed are reflective of the Home Office DDaT Profession Skills and Competency Model (based on the industry standard SFIA framework), please review the attached �Role Description� which highlights the expected technical skills and required levels for this role.
Skills for the information age (SFIA) is the technical framework that sets the standard capability and development of all engineering levels in the Home Office. This is a link to the capability framework:��
Technical skills
We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
Benefits
This link is to a short guide on YouTube to our employee benefits
�