Lead Software Developer - Ministry of Justice - G7

Locations:

East Midlands (England), East of England, London (region), North East England, North West England, Scotland, South East England, South West England, Wales, West Midlands (England), Yorkshire and the Humber

The Role

Please note this role requires you to pass Security Check clearance. Please click on the link for details.

We’re recruiting for a Lead Developer here at Justice Digital, to be part of our warm and collaborative Developer Experience team which sits in the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO).

This role aligns against the Lead Developer Role from the Government Digital and Data Framework

OCTO sets technical direction across the organisation. It defines standards, shapes platforms and ways of working, and supports teams to build and operate services that are secure, reliable and sustainable.

This role focuses on improving how engineers work by defining standards and ensuring they are implemented through shared tooling rather than guidance alone. You will play an integral part in central teams responsible for Developer Experience (DevX) and the Developer Portal, working closely with platform, security and architecture teams.

You’ll be confident working with other developers on our tech stack and comfortable learning new technologies and systems. We use a variety of different technologies and will work with you to place you in a team that matches your skills, interests and aspirations wherever possible.

You will work with user researchers, product managers, designers, delivery managers, technical architects and content specialists who share a vision for improving government through smarter use of technology.

You can find more details of the Benefits we offer here. To help picture your life at MoJ Justice Digital, Data and Science please take a look at our blog.

Our Tech Stack

We use a range of technologies and we’re looking for people who specialise in one or more of them (Python or Java) and who love learning new languages and frameworks.

For example, we might use Python to write our application code, Circle CI or GitHub Actions for CI/CD, Sentry for application monitoring, Kubernetes and Docker to schedule and run our services (read about our Cloud Platform), AWS for most of our infrastructure, GOV.UK Design System for our web interfaces and use Macbook Pros.

For front-end development, we value a robust understanding of the underlying web technologies. We value well-maintained, open-source tools that can be used to produce semantic HTML, performant CSS and unobtrusive JavaScript or TypeScript, and we assess all our services against accessibility criteria.

We’re happy to help you learn our tech stack once you’re part of our team, and do not require an exact match in your experience of languages. Check out GitHub for a closer look at the technologies we use, and a complete list of services that we build and maintain. We subscribe to the manifesto for agile software development.

Our Community

We currently have over 200+ experienced developers who make up the engineering community across the MoJ. You will coach and mentor junior colleagues and take part in informal support networks with your peers. You will be encouraged to play an active role in the engineering community and culture.

We take the responsibility of supportive and effective line management very seriously. We will value the skills you bring to the civil service and help you to build on them. When the time is right, we will support moving between teams or government departments to learn different technologies, or take on more responsibility, according to your career goals.

Take a look at our developer blog to get a sense of our work and culture.

Key Responsibilities

This role combines a number of key disciplines in addition to hands-on development and writing code. You will inspire, mentor, coach, manage and lead software developers within a business domain. You will also focus on generating a culture of quality, maintaining balance between building sustainable well architected products and unlocking citizen value early

The areas of your responsibility for leadership will shift between people, architecture, development and product strategy, depending on context and need

You will contribute to the technical leadership in DevX team, specifically Developer Tooling. There will be opportunity to line manage several Senior Developers as the team expands into Developer Portal.

Technical Leadership

• Taking responsibility for tickets and releasing production ready code
• Collaborate with Technical Architects and Product Managers to set product direction
• Collaborate with Technical Architects to help in the design of systems and implementation of coherent and sustainable technical roadmaps
• Lead discussions with Developers to nurture consensus on technical/team decisions
• Support backlog refinement, helping plan, define and prioritise actionable tasks for the team
• Build inclusivity and understanding by promoting strategies to share technical knowledge of our systems with appropriate documentation and other activities
• Support Delivery Managers in unblocking value where necessary and/or honest representations of effort in an agile environment as the teams learn more

Engineering Management

• Managing, coaching and growing people with a focus on their wellbeing and development
• Support Delivery Managers in improving team maturity

Engineering Profession

• Work with your local Principal Developer and the wider community to improve and maintain good coding standards and practices
• Help provide feedback on wider technical strategy of your business unit
• Share knowledge and build enthusiasm for sharing via activities like brown bags, cooperative workshops, chat discussions and other means
• Encourage open discussion and drive communities in our primary communication tools
• Have a mindset for growth and learning looking for emerging technologies, tools and good practice
• Help build and maintain a diverse, inclusive culture across the development community, growing awareness, inclusivity, and balance
• Take part in the recruitment and onboarding of other Developers

If this feels like an exciting challenge, something you are enthusiastic about, and want to join our team please read on and apply!

Person Specification

Essential

• You can demonstrate proven experience of Python or Java.
• You have experience of software development and writing production ready code.
• You have experience nurturing a culture of good software practice that makes change easy.
• You can share evidence of growing your skills in technical leadership, and advocating for your team.
• You have coached other people.
• You have contributed towards building a high performing, inclusive team culture.
• You have experience in delivering better value sooner and safer, through DevOps, XP or other ways of working that lead to agility and collaboration.
• You enjoy building long-lasting relationships and trust with others.
• You have proven technical leadership skills.
• You have grown sustainable teams.

Willingness to be assessed against  the requirements for SC clearance.