The Home Office works to build a safe, fair and prosperous UK. We achieve this through our work on counter-terrorism, policing, fire, crime, drugs policy, immigration and passports. To help deliver outcomes in these areas, we’re recruiting entry level to experienced engineers for a number of roles in our Digital, Data and Technology teams based in Croydon, Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow.
The roles we’re advertising are:
Upcoming events
Our next online recruitment event will take place in May 2023, and we’ll share more details soon. At this event you’ll hear from the engineering team about their work and experiences and recruiters will talk through the jobs on offer and recruitment process .
Home Office Digital, Data and Technology
Our team members have specialised technical knowledge and a calling to build on it. We want the best people to come to the Home Office and work in the diverse roles and communities they’re passionate about. This is how we produce exceptional outcomes.
Our principal role is to enable transformation through improved business efficiency. As part of this, you could be designing, building and developing services that help people apply for visas or passports, support policing and counter-terrorism operations, and protect the UK’s borders.
More details about the responsibilities of each role can be found in the relevant job sections below.
You can access more information about working in Digital, Data and Technology and the Software Engineering cluster on our dedicated pages.
Hybrid working
These roles are based in Croydon, Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow. Hybrid working, whereby you can work a minimum of 40 per cent of your time from the office and up to 60 per cent from home, is available for these roles.
Benefits
We offer competitive starting salaries. These are detailed in the role-specific job descriptions below. There are also additional allowances available for candidates with exceptional skills and experience. You will also receive a Civil Service Pension with employer contribution rates of at least 26.6%, and a range of other brilliant benefits including flexible working and 25 days annual leave on appointment, rising with service.
Whichever team you are allocated to, you will receive outstanding training and support. And you will be joining a profession and an organisation with clear and transparent career progression, as well as access to a wide range of development opportunities. This could include AWS and Azure training and certification, O’Reilly Books and high-quality management training. In addition, we offer allocated study leave and support when studying for a relevant qualification or other accredited development. This may include British Computer Society (BCS) Membership, or study towards a degree or master’s qualification.
Find out more about some of the other benefits we offer.
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This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Experience and Technical skills. But in addition to this the Home Office use the industry standard Skills Framework for Information Age (SFIA) to assess candidates against the relevant skills for the role.
You will need to submit your application through the online civil service recruitment portal, Civil Service Jobs. Role-specific application links are below.
1. Personal statement
As part of the application process, you will be asked to complete a CV and Personal Statement with a maximum word limit of 500 words. Your Personal Statement should explain why you are interested in the role and provide evidence of how you meet the essential criteria set for each role as well as how your personal skills, qualities and experience make you suitable for the role.
Candidate applications will be sifted according to the experience detailed on their CV and the evidence contained within their Personal Statement against our Essential Criteria.
2. Technical Test
Candidates who pass the sift will be provided with a technical exercise to complete. Details of this test will be provided prior to the interview. The test will assess your ability to perform effectively in the advertised role.
The applications of candidates who fail to complete the test or do not reach the required standard will not be progressed further.
3. The interview
Candidates reaching the required standard will then be invited to attend an interview. The interview will assess your skills and experience using a range of technical and experience-based questions.
The roles on offer
Principal Engineer
We’re offering 1 role. This is at the Civil Service grade of Grade 6.
You can also view a version of this video with audio description
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Croydon
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£70,500 – £77,550
An additional allowance of £13,700 is available for candidates with exceptional skills & experience.
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- supporting implementation against strategy; leading multiple engineering teams in
line with our architecture and professions - planning our workforce and recruiting civil servants, building a strong technical talent
pool; coaching and mentoring as necessary - ensuring the engineering activities undertaken in teams under your supervision are
following suitable standards - supporting technical decision making, feeding into roadmaps and overall strategy for
the Engineering function in your area. Presenting decisions up and down the
organisation clearly - coordinating with other engineering leads to form an overall community, acting as the
central point of contact in your area and leading collaborative efforts
- supporting implementation against strategy; leading multiple engineering teams in
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- leading technology teams, ultimately adhering to good software design principles
from proposal through to implementation - in a wide range of technical systems, preferably covering cloud hosted solutions
developed with Java ideally or C#/node.js/Python (secondary). It’s desirable that you
know some Kubernetes, Jenkins, Terraform and Docker to help form new CI/CD
pipelines - of Agile development using continuous integration principles
- coordinating delivery across multiple systems, as well as defining, documenting and
testing technical solutions
- leading technology teams, ultimately adhering to good software design principles
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- Systems Development Management (DLMG) – Level 6
- Software Design (SWDN) – Level 5
- Programming/software development (PROG) – Level 4
Skills and Quality - People Management
- Performance Management (PEMT) – Level 5
- Professional Development (PDSV) – Level 6
- Quality and Conformance
- Quality Management (QUMG) – Level 6
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The application closing date will be 23:55 on 2 April 2023.
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If you’d like to discuss this role, you can contact Amra Hurley. ([email protected])
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If you are interested in our Principal Engineer opportunity, you can read more and apply using the button below.
Principal Developer
We’re offering 1 role. This is at the Civil Service grade of Grade 6.
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- Croydon
- Sheffield
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£65,500- £77,550
An additional allowance of £13,700 is available for candidates with exceptional skills & experience
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- carrying out challenging implementation tasks, whilst maintaining strong stakeholder engagement and keeping the relevant documentation up to date
- delivering new designs and implementations, working with architects/security and other stakeholders
- pioneering new software architectural and build/integration approaches, ensuring they adhere to organisational strategy
- implementing effective test and QA across a number of individuals/systems
- being the technical authority in your area, providing arbitration for complex technical decisions
- prioritising and directing technical tasks across multiple teams, to balance new and live services ensuring high-quality code is delivered in line with project goals and delivery cycles.
- be hands-on, sharing your knowledge through coaching and mentoring less experienced developers together with proactively promoting knowledges of tools and practices across teams.
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Successful candidates should be experts in either Frontend or Backend development, with an understanding of the other. We’re open to Principal Developers coming from either path.
If you’re a backend developer, you’ll be expected to have substantial knowledge of:
- Java Spring or NodeJS, SQL and no SQL databases
If you’re a frontend developer, you’ll be expected to have substantial knowledge of:
- JavaScript, React, HTML, CSS and NodeJS
All Principal Developers will be expected to demonstrate strong expertise in:
- leading and advocating test-driven development with a focus on automation and have practised and coached others in these skills
- agile development methodologies, including writing and taking ownership of stories
- leading on changes within the full software delivery lifecycle
- improving continuous deployment pipeline to ensure code is released to production multiple times per day
- cloud-based approach (AWS, Azure, Docker and Kubernetes)
- RESTful API design
- secure development practices
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- Technical Strategy and Planning
- Data Management (DATM) – Level 5
- Systems Development
- Software Design (SWDN) – Level 6
- Programming/software development (PROG) – Level 5
- Testing (TEST) – Level 5
- Installation and Integration
- Systems integration and build (SINT) – Level 6
- Service Operation
- Application support (ASUP) – Level 5
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The application closing date will be 23:55 on 2 April 2023.
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If you’d like to discuss this role, you can contact Amra Hurley ([email protected])
Contact for further information
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If you are interested in our Principal Developer opportunity, you can read more and apply using the button below.
Software Engineering Team Lead
We’re offering 3 roles. This is at the Civil Service grade of Grade 7.
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- Manchester
- Sheffield
- Croydon
- Hendon
- Glasgow
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£54,000 – £64,900
An additional allowance of up to £11,300 is available for candidates with exceptional skills & experience.
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Your key areas of impact
- Building and leading an agile software engineering team delivering with high performance and high quality
- Taking a hands-on role with engineering delivery where necessary, blending your leadership and technical skills to achieve team objectives
- Growing and developing team members as well as Supporting Continuous Professional Development (CPD) and encouraging formal professional qualifications
- Working with your peers to improve our tools, technologies, guidance and standards
- Progressing the Digital Data and Technology profession, understanding all roles and helping to build our engineering community.
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You’ll have a demonstrable passion for leading engineering teams with the following skills or proven experience in:
- Backed or full stack development using modern web programming languages such as Java or PHP or JavaScript or NodeJS for example
- Defining RESTful APIs
- Building new services and establishing and developing common approaches, contributing to technical strategy, helping to deliver consistently and iterate quickly
- Leading test-driven development with a focus on automation
- Working within an agile environment
- Taking a “people first” approach and caring deeply about nurturing a healthy team culture
- Working through all aspects of the software delivery lifecycle with focus on continuous integration and continuous delivery
- Understanding of our core tech stack – Java or C# or JavaScript
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We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Performance Management (PEMT) – Level 4
- Professional Development (PDSV) – Level 5
- Programming/software development (PROG) – Level 4
- Quality Management (QUMG) – Level 5
- Software Design (SWDN) – Level 5
- Systems Development Management (DLMG) – Level 5
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The application closing date will be 23:55 on 2 April 2023.
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If you’d like to discuss this role, you can contact Amra Hurley (Amra.Hurley@digital.homeoffice.gov.uk)
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If you are interested in one of our Software Engineering Team Lead opportunities, you can read more and apply using the button below.
Senior Software Developer
We’re offering 2 roles. These are at the Civil Service grade of Grade 7.
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- Manchester
- Sheffield
- Croydon
- Hendon
- Glasgow
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£54,000 – £64,900
An additional allowance of up to £11,300 is available for candidates with exceptional skills & experience.
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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. You’ll 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
- 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
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You’ll be 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:
- java or C# or JavaScript (and frameworks such as Node or React) or those with a background using another modern programming language like PHP or python who have some understanding of our core tech stack
- Databases and DB technology (RDBMS, NoSQL etc)
- Working with an agile environment
- Full software delivery lifecycle
- 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.)
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We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Application Support (ASUP) – Level 5
- Data Management (DATM) – Level 5
- Programming Software Development (PROG) – Level 4
- Software Design (SWDN) – Level 5
- Systems Integration and Build (SINT) – Level 5
- Testing (TEST) – Level 4
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The application closing date will be on 23:55 on 2 April 2023.
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If you’d like to discuss this role, you can contact George Hill (George.Hill@homeoffice.gov.uk)
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If you are interested in one of our Senior Software Developer opportunities, you can read more and apply using the button below.
Senior DevOps Engineer
We’re offering 1 role. These roles are at the Civil Service grade of Grade 7.
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- Glasgow
- Manchester
- Sheffield
- Hendon
- Croydon
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£54,000 – £64,900
An additional allowance of up to £11,300 is available for candidates with exceptional skills & experience.
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Your main day to day responsibilities will be:
- Writing scripts to deliver/work with our platforms, such as developing docker/terraform/ansible files for a variety of systems/frameworks
- Providing technical support functions, solving more challenging platform use and configuration issues
- Providing feedback to project teams on platform use; supporting routine monitoring activities
- Advising developers on how they should use existing systems and configure CI/CD pipelines
- Working on ways to automate and improve development and release processes
- Working with developers to ensure that development follows established processes and works as intended
- 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.
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Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) Architecture and Services Provided.
- Working knowledge Git / source control
- Consuming Container Orchestration Solutions (Kubernetes / ECS / EKS / Openshift)
- CI/CD pipelines – ideally Jenkins, Bamboo, GitLab etc
- Scripting (any of the following) Bash, Perl, Python or Go
- Working in an agile way following DevOps principles.
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We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Data Management (DATM) – Level 5
- Software Design (SWDN) – Level 5
- Programming/Software Development (PROG) – Level 4
- Testing (TEST) – Level 4
- Systems Integration and Build (SINT) - Level 5
- Application Support (ASUP) – Level 5
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The application closing date will be 23:55 on 2 April 2023.
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If you’d like to discuss this role, you can contact Callum Townley ([email protected])
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If you are interested in our Senior DevOps Engineer opportunities, you can read more and apply using the button below.
DevOps Engineer
We’re offering 1 role. This is at the Civil Service grade of Senior Executive Officer.
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- Glasgow
- Manchester
- Sheffield
- Hendon
- Croydon
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£39,000 – £47,300
An additional allowance up to £8,300 is available for candidates with exceptional skills & experience.
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Your main day to day duties will involve:
- Writing scripts to deliver/work with our platforms, such as developing docker/terraform/ansible files for a variety of systems/frameworks
- Providing technical support functions, solving more challenging platform use and configuration issues
- Providing feedback to project teams on platform use; supporting routine monitoring activities
- Advising developers on how they should use existing systems and configure CI/CD pipelines
- Working on ways to automate and improve development and release processes
- Working with developers to ensure that development follows established processes and works as intended.
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.
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- Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) Architecture and Services Provided
- Working knowledge Git / source control
- Consuming Container Orchestration Solutions (Kubernetes / ECS / EKS / Openshift)
- CI/CD pipelines – ideally Jenkins, Bamboo, GitLab etc.
- Scripting (any of the following) Bash, Perl, Python or Go
- Working in an agile way following DevOps principles
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We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Application Support (ASUP) – Level 4
- Data Management (DATM) – Level 4
- Programming Software Development (PROG) – Level 4
- Software Design (SWDN) – Level 4
- Systems Integration and Build (SINT) – Level 4
- Testing (TEST) – Level 4
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The application closing date will be 23:55 on 2 April 2023.
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If you’d like to discuss this role, you can contact Callum Townley ([email protected])
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If you are interested in our DevOps Engineer opportunities, you can read and apply using the button below.
Software Developer
We’re offering 6 roles. This is at the Civil Service grade of Senior Executive Officer.
You can also view a version of this video with audio description.
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- Glasgow
- Sheffield
- Manchester
- Hendon
- Croydon
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£39,000 – £47,300
An additional allowance up to £8,300 is available for candidates with exceptional skills & experience.
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As a Developer you’ll ensure high quality code is delivered in line with project goals and delivery cycles. You’ll thrive using agile methods and enjoy working openly, collaboratively and as part of a multidisciplinary team focused on one or more projects.
- Building RESTful web services to serve a variety of citizen and government needs, taking responsibility for the quality of code you produce
- Implementing toolkits and APIs for purposes such as integration, performance optimisation, security and scalability
- Delivering secure, reliable and scalable software in your team; undertaking a breadth of development tasks
- Designing new software using appropriate tools and in line with standards, proving designs through prototyping
- Reporting on system performance and support test activities; keep documentation up to date.
- Supporting services you deliver through regular maintenance activities, balancing your work with your leadership
- Working with other engineers to deliver new capability, for instance improved CI/CD pipelines or test approaches
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- Backend or full-stack development, with detailed knowledge of at least one modern web programming language and their respective ecosystem such as; Java or C# or Python, PHP or JavaScript, NodeJS for example
- Agile environments and version control
- Working practices such as test driven development (focusing on automation), continuous integration and continuous delivery
- Cloud based approaches and the use of orchestration tools (AWS, Azure, Docker and Kubernetes)
- The full software delivery cycle
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We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Technical Strategy and Planning - Data Management (DATM) Level 4
- Systems Development - Software Design (SWDN) Level 4
- Systems Development - Programming/Software Development (PROG) Level 4
- Systems Development - Testing (TEST) Level 4
- Installation and Integration - Systems Integration and Build (SINT) Level 4
- Service Operation - Application Support (ASUP) Level
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The application closing date will be 23:55 on 2 April 2023.
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If you’d like to discuss this role, you can contact George Hill
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If you are interested in our Software Developer opportunities, you can read more and apply using the button below.
SharePoint Developer
We’re offering 1 role. This is at the Civil Service grade of Senior Executive Officer.
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- Sheffield
- Manchester
- Croydon
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£39,000 – £47,300
An additional allowance up to £8,300 is available for candidates with exceptional skills & experience.
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- delivering secure, reliable and scalable software in your team; undertaking a breadth of development tasks
- designing new software using appropriate tools and in line with standards, proving designs through prototyping
- reporting on system performance and supporting test activities; keeping documentation up to date
- supporting services you have delivered through regular maintenance activities, balancing your work with your leadership
- working with other engineers to deliver new capability, for instance improved CI/CD pipelines or test approaches
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You’ll have a demonstrable passion for SharePoint, with the following skills or some experience in:
- good knowledge of SharePoint and experience in managing SharePoint large site collections
- Azure DevOps for CI/CD
- configuration of SharePoint Search
- authoring of custom web parts using SPFX Web Parts and PNP
- Framework OR experience of Typescript and React.
- continuous delivery and agile ways of working
supporting live services
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We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Data Management (DATM) – Level 4
- Software Design (SWDN) – Level 4
- Programming/Software Development (PROG) – Level 4
- Testing (TEST) – Level 4
- Systems Integration and Build (SINT) - Level 4
- Application Support (ASUP) – Level 4
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The application closing date will be 23:55 on 2 April 2023.
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If you’d like to discuss this role, you can contact Callum. Townley
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If you are interested in our SharePoint Developer opportunity, you can read more and apply using the button below.
Python Developer
We’re offering 1 role. This is at the Civil Service grade of Senior Executive Officer.
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- Manchester
- Croydon
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£39,000 – £47,300
An additional allowance up to £8,300 is available for candidates with exceptional skills & experience.
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- building RESTful web services to serve a variety of citizen and government needs, taking responsibility for the quality of code you produce
- implementing toolkits and APIs for purposes such as integration, performance optimisation, security and scalability
- delivering secure, reliable and scalable software in your team; undertaking a breadth of development tasks
- designing new software using appropriate tools and in line with standards, proving designs through prototyping
- reporting on system performance and support test activities; keep documentation up to date.
- supporting services you deliver through regular maintenance activities, balancing your work with your leadership
- working with other engineers to deliver new capability, for instance improved CI/CD pipelines or test approaches.
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As a developer you will have experience of:
- backend or full-stack development, with detailed knowledge and experience of Python
- experience of agile practices and version control
- experience using different testing techniques like unit testing
- experience working with databases
- Knowledge and awareness of the full software development lifecycle
- an interest in cloud based approaches and orchestration tools such as AWS, Azure, Docker and Kubernetes
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We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Data Management (DATM) Level 4
- Software Design (SWDN) Level 4
- Programming/Software Development (PROG) Level 4
- Testing (TEST) Level 4
- Systems Integration and Build (SINT) Level 4
- Application Support (ASUP) Level 4
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The application closing date will be 23:55 on 2 April 2023.
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If you’d like to discuss this role, you can contact George Hill ([email protected])
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If you are interested in our Python Developer opportunity, you can read more and apply using the button below.
Microsoft DevOps Engineer
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- Sheffield
- Manchester
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£39,000 – £42,900
An additional allowance up to £8,300 is available for candidates with exceptional skills & experience.
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Your main day to day responsibilities will be:
- Writing configuration or scripts to deliver/work with our platforms, such as modifying YAML or parametrising JSON files
- Providing technical support, solving more challenging configuration issues
- Configuring automated monitoring and alerting solutions.
- Providing feedback to project teams on application use; supporting routine monitoring activities
- Configuring CI/CD pipelines for Azure and Power Platform solutions.
- Working on ways to automate and improve development and release processes
- Working with developers to ensure that development follows established processes and works as intended
- 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.
-
You will be ideal for this role if you have a demonstrable passion for automation and collaboration, with skills or experience in some of the below:
- Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) Architecture and Services Provided
- Working knowledge Git / source control
- Management and deployment of Serverless functions.
- CI/CD pipelines
- Working in an agile way following DevOps principles.
- Monitoring, Alerting, Logging tools/methods
- Use of configuration languages e.g. YAML, Bicep.
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We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Data Management (DATM) – Level 4
- Software Design (SWDN) – Level 4
- Programming/Software Development (PROG) – Level 4
- Testing (TEST) – Level 4
- Systems Integration and Build (SINT) - Level 4
- Application Support (ASUP) – Level 4
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The application closing date will be 23:55 on 2 April 2023.
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If you’d like to discuss this role, you can contact Callum Townley ([email protected])
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If you are interested in our Microsoft DevOps Engineer opportunity, you can read more and apply using the button below.
Associate DevOps Engineer
We’re offering 3 roles. This is at the Civil Service Grade of Higher Executive Officer
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- Sheffield
- Manchester
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£32,000 – £35,200
An additional allowance up to £5,000 is available for candidates with exceptional skills & experience.
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Your main day to day responsibilities will include:
- Providing helpdesk support to resolve platform operational issues and support system and service uptime
- Writing simple automation components (scripts/playbooks) for our platforms
- Helping execute test and deployment activities with teams
- Signposting users to appropriate people and technical resources
- Learning more advanced automation and cloud skills to advance as an engineer.
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You’ll have demonstrable knowledge of automation, with the following skills or some experience of:
- Use and knowledge of Linux and Windows plus basic scripting using Python, Bash and PowerShell
- Operations using virtual machines, infrastructure as code and associated patterns
- The configuration and use of cloud services to achieve high availability, fault tolerance, scalability & elasticity
- Defining and implementing VPCs, cloud networks, security & access groups, Security keys & key management systems and automated deployment (as well as CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins or Drone)
- Using Docker and Kubernetes commands.
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We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Data Management (DATM) – Level 4
- Software Design (SWDN) – Level 3
- Programming/Software Development (PROG) – Level 3
- Programming/Software Development (PROG) – Level 3
- Systems Integration and Build (SINT) - Level 3
- Application Support (ASUP) – Level 4
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The application closing date will be 23:55 on 2 April 2023.
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If you’d like to discuss this role, you can contact Callum Townley ([email protected])
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If you are interested in one of our Associate DevOps Engineer opportunities, you can read more and apply using the button below.
