Lead Software Engineer

Are you ready to lead and influence engineering at scale, shaping how software is built across one of the UK's largest digital organisations?

As a Lead Software Engineer, you'll join our Health & Disability area at DWP Digital, playing a critical leadership role in shaping how we build and deliver modern digital services. You'll lead a blend of DWP and supplier engineers across multiple teams, setting direction, establishing engineering standards, and driving consistency, quality, and pace across delivery.

You'll be at the forefront of transforming our engineering capability, helping to embed modern practices and approaches such as microservices and event-driven architecture. This is a strategic leadership role where your work will directly impact how we design and deliver services supporting citizens at key moments in their lives.

The scale of what we do is extraordinary, and our purpose is unique. We'd love you to join us.

What skills, knowledge and experience will you need?

• You can lead multiple engineering teams, guiding how they work and helping them improve how they deliver software
• You're highly skilled in modern programming languages like Java or JavaScript/Node, and understand how to apply them at scale
• You've worked extensively with cloud platforms such as AWS or Azure, building and running services in live environments
• You understand Test-Driven Development and use it to improve quality, reliability, and confidence in software
• You're comfortable working with both relational and non-relational databases like Postgres, MySQL, or MongoDB
• You can influence and communicate complex technical ideas clearly to non-technical stakeholders, including senior leaders

You and your role

As a Lead Software Engineer, you'll lead approx. 5 engineering teams, working alongside other senior leaders in Health and Disability to shape direction, strategy and delivery. This isn't a role focused on hands-on coding - it's about leading engineering excellence across multiple teams, ensuring the right practices and standards are consistently applied.

By aligning ways of working, removing blockers, and encouraging reuse and collaboration, you'll enable teams to deliver high-quality services at pace.

You'll sit as part of the senior leadership team for your area, influencing long-term technology strategy and helping to define how DWP continues to modernise its digital estate. You'll bring teams on that journey - coaching, mentoring and building capability so that engineering communities grow stronger and more effective over time.

Your work will directly support the shift towards modern architectures, including microservices and event-driven design, ensuring services are scalable, resilient and able to meet the needs of millions of users.

You'll succeed if you care deeply about engineering excellence, enjoy developing others, and want to shape how one of the UK's largest digital organisations delivers services in the future.

Details. Wages. Perks.

Location: You'll join us in our brilliant digital hubs in Manchester

Hybrid Working: We work a hybrid model - you'll spend some time working at home and some time collaborating face to face in a hub.

Pay: We offer pay up to £92,522. That's £80,267 salary plus a Digital Allowance of up to £12,255 subject to our assessment of your capability at interview

Pension: You'll get a brilliant civil service pension with employer contributions worth 28.97%, worth up to £21,735 per year.

Holidays: A generous leave package starting at 26 days rising to 31 days over time.