48687 - Lead Developer

The national salary range is £50,427 - £59,000, London salary range is £54,274 - £63,500. Your salary will be dependent on your base location
1
12 Months
East Midlands, London, Scotland, West Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, National
Birmingham , Glasgow , London, Nottingham , Sheffield
102 PETTY FRANCE (MOJ) LONDON, SW1H 9AJ, AXIS BIRMINGHAM, B1 1TG, GLASGOW ST VINCENT GLASGOW, G2 5HF, NOTTINGHAM MARKET SQUARE NOTTINGHAM, NG1 6JH, NOMS DIGITAL STUDIO SHEFFIELD, Greenfield House, 32 Scotland Street, Sheffield, S3 7DQ, S3 7DQ
Grade 7
Grade 7
Permanent
Full Time, Flexible Working
Digital

We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued and a sense of belonging. To find out more about how we do this visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity.

Lead Software Developer

LAA Digital, part of the Ministry of Justice, is looking for a Lead Software Developer. We really want to hear from people who want to make a difference by overhauling the legacy technology that underpins many of our existing services. Our mission is to make it possible for the Legal Aid Agency to deliver its vision as fast as possible by developing our technical agility.

What you would be doing

You will develop, inspire, mentor, coach, manage and lead Software Developers within a business domain. You will drive up quality, maintain balance between building sustainable products and shipping things quickly, understand software architecture and uphold engineering standards.

The role comprises aspects of tech lead and engineering management responsibilities. The primary areas of responsibility will shift between code, architecture, people, team health and product strategy, depending on context and need.

You will report to the Principal Developer.

Responsibilities

As a Lead Developer at MoJ you will have engineering management, technical leadership and engineering profession responsibilities.

Engineering Management

  • have engineering management responsibilities - managing, coaching, growing people, plus working alongside Delivery Managers to ensure great team health (ways of working, productivity, happiness) with a focus on Software Developers
  • responsible for people management of engineers within one or more product teams grouped by business domain, creating a brilliant environment for coaching and people development to be shared by Lead and Senior Developers

Technical Leadership

  • work alongside 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 gain consensus on technical decisions, to understand application architecture, to unblock technical issues and to resolve disputes
  • own and take responsibility for team decisions, whilst looking to delegate decision making to those with more expertise and as opportunities for growth
  • understand technical work undertaken by the team (at a high level) across the entire stack from frontend to database, including infrastructure.
  • provide technical leadership in backlog refinement, helping plan, define and prioritise actionable tasks for the team
  • ensure teams produce adequate documentation and put strategies in place to distribute and share adequate technical knowledge of our systems
  • support the Delivery Manager in ensuring a good rate of software delivery using four key metrics: lead time to change, deployment frequency, mean time to restore and change failure rate percentage
  • work alongside delivery manager to champion relevant agile methodologies and practices such as Extreme Programming / Kanban / Scrum

Engineering Profession

  • Work with their local Principal Developer and the wider community to improve and/or maintain good coding standards and practices. Provide leadership and opinion on style choices, design principles, API design, dependency management, etc.
  • Provide input and challenge to the Principal Developer on the wider agenda and technical strategy, influencing decisions that affect the technical direction of the business unit
  • Arrange, lead and deliver internal training and workshops on a range of relevant technical topics and disciplines
  • Be a prominent moderator in technical slack channels, encouraging wider input and acting as a driver of the community
  • Lead discussions in the development, organisation and visibility of reusable components
  • Monitor the external landscape 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

To help picture your life at MoJ D&T please take a look at our blog and our Digital & Technology strategy.

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

This is a Band 7 role with a salary of  £54,274 - £79,180 London // £50,427 - £72,846 plus great benefits:

  • 37 hours per week and flexible working options including working from home, working part-time, job sharing, or working compressed hours.
  • We are committed to nurturing our staff and provide lots of training and development opportunities with learning platforms such as: Linux Academy, O’Reilly, Pluralsight, Microsoft Learning, Civil Service Learning, GDS Academy, etc.
  • 10% dedicated time to learning and development with a budget of £1000 a year per person
  • Generous civil service pension based on defined benefit scheme, with employer contributions of 26-30% depending on salary.
  • 25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the Queens’ birthday. 5 additional days of leave once you have reached 5 years of service.
  • Compassionate maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave policies, with up to 26 weeks leave at full pay, 13 weeks with partial pay, and 13 weeks further leave. And maternity support/paternity leave at full pay for 2 weeks, too!
  • Wellbeing support including access to the Calm app.
  • Nurturing professional and interpersonal networks including those for Careers & Childcare, Gender Equality, PROUD and SPIRIT
  • Bike loans up to £2500 and secure bike parking (subject to availability and location)
  • Season ticket loans, childcare vouchers and eye-care vouchers.
  • 5 days volunteering paid leave.
  • Free membership to BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.
  • Some offices may have a subsidised onsite Gym.

Person Specification

You may be great for this role if you:

  • have broad experience of software engineering and cloud technologies
  • often take on the technical leadership responsibilities despite the job title
  • have experience of engineering management and appreciate people work is just as, or more important, than technical work
  • want to have more impact, influence and leadership
  • champion software maintenance, clean code and practices that make change easy
  • optimise for better value sooner and safer, through DevOps, XP or other ways of working that lead to agility
  • enjoy learning and helping others
  • hold yourself and others to a high standard
  • solve problems in a systematic way

You’ll value:

  • continuous learning and development
  • being inclusive, supportive, inquisitive and responsible (MoJ D&T core values)
  • working with integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality (Civil Service core values)

You can read more about the Lead Developer role in the DDaT Capability Framework.

How we do things

We subscribe to the manifesto for agile software development. We foster multidisciplinary teams that are collaborative, inclusive, diverse and respectful. We welcome continuous improvement in code, architecture, processes and ways of working. We default to doing things in the open. We value mending and maintaining as much as building and modernising. We believe everyone should be involved in user research and you should be comfortable working with a cross functional approach, regularly working directly with other professions.

Our engineering community

LAA Digital currently has over 35 Developers, split between Junior, Mid and Senior Developers. The Lead Developer role is a new role for MoJ Digital & Technology, positioned to support the growth of the engineering professions. MoJ Digital & Technology has over 160 people in the wider engineering community, made up of Developers, Technical Architects and people who build and operate platforms and infrastructure. We have various community meetups and informal support networks.

Take a look at our tech blog.

Our tech stack

We rely heavily on:

  • Ruby, Java and Python to write our application code
  • Circle CI and AWS CodePipeline for deployment
  • Sentry, Kibana, Grafana and Prometheus for application monitoring and alerting
  • Kubernetes and Docker to schedule and run our services (read about our Cloud Platform)
  • AWS for most of our infrastructure
  • UK Design System for our web interfaces
  • Macs to do all of the above

The majority of production systems are built on top of legacy Oracle enterprise technology which is continually being chipped away at.

About LAA Digital

LAA Digital is a part of MOJ Digital and Technology. The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) is rapidly transforming and LAA Digital’s mission is to help people get the legal support they need by building world-class services that put the user first.

LAA Digital has a diverse portfolio of products and services, grouped into domains such as eligibility, applications, payments and billing, finance, criminal legal aid, reporting and analytics. We have a mature, in-house software development team, building services with both public and professional user interfaces, built on top of our APIs and Cloud Platform.

A lot of our legacy code remains private but we’re always trying to open it up.

How to Apply

Candidates must submit a CV and Cover Letter which describes how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above.

In D&T, we recruit using a combination of the Digital, Data and Technology Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process:

  • Developing self & others
  • Making effective decisions
  • Delivering at pace
  • Working together

Your application will be reviewed and sifted against the Person Specification above by a diverse panel.

Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a 1.5 hour panel interview held via video conference.

Terms & Conditions

Please review the following Terms & Conditions which set out the way we recruit and provide further information related to the role and salary arrangements.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact recruitment@digital.justice.gov.uk

17/10/2021, 23:55 hours.

If you require any assistance please call 0845 241 5359 (Monday to Friday 8am - 6pm) or e mail Moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@gov.sscl.com Please quote the job reference - 48687.

To apply for roles in MOJ you will need to confirm your employment history for at least 3 years prior to the date of application so that pre-employment checks (BPSS) can be undertaken. If you have spent significant time abroad (a total of 6 months in the past 3 years) you would be required to give a reasonable account of the reasons why. 

For some roles you will be required to successfully complete National Security Vetting at Counter Terrorism (CTC), Security Clearance (SC) or Developed Vetting (DV) level as a condition of appointment. To meet CTC/SC/DV requirements you will normally need to have been resident in the UK for at least 3/5/10 years prior to the date of application (The level of checks that are required are stated in the advert).

If you do not meet the above requirements, you may still be considered if, for example:

  • You've been serving overseas with HM Forces or in some other official capacity as a representative of HM Government
  • You were studying abroad
  • You were living overseas with parents

In such cases you will need to be able to provide referee cover for the period(s) of residence overseas. The duration of overseas residence and the country of abode will also be taken into account.

Success Profiles will enable a fairer and more inclusive method of recruitment by enabling us to assess the range of experiences, abilities, strengths, behaviours and technical/professional skills required for different roles. This flexible approach to recruitment focuses more on finding the right candidate for the specific role. To find out more about Success Profiles to support your application please click here for further guidance.

if you feel that your application has not been treated in line with the Civil Service Recruitment Principles, please contact SSCL (Moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@gov.sscl.com) in the first instance

We have provided detail of the assessment stages and areas being assessed to help you prepare for completing your application form, and to advise of what will be assessed following this, if you successfully pass the application stage.


Application form stage assessments

Interview stage assessments

There is 1 interview stage for this vacancy.

A Great Place to Work for Veterans

The "Making the Civil Service a Great Place to work for veterans" initiative includes a guaranteed interview scheme to those who meet the minimum criteria to provide eligible former members of the Armed Forces with opportunities to secure rewarding jobs. Allowing veterans to continue to serve their country, and to bring highly skilled individuals with a broad range of experience into the Civil Service in an environment, which recognises and values your previous service in the Armed Forces.
For further details about the initiative and eligibility requirements visit : https://www.gov.uk/government/news/making-the-civil-service-a-great-place-to-work-for-veterans

Redeployment Interview Scheme

Civil Service departments are expected to explore redeployment opportunities before making an individual redundant. The MoJ are committed, as part of the Redeployment Interview Scheme, to providing opportunities to those who are 'at risk of redundancy'.

MoJ are able to offer an interview to eligible candidates who meet the minimum selection criteria, except in a limited number of campaigns. Candidate's will not be eligible for the Redeployment Interview Scheme if they are applying on promotion.

For further information and to apply for this position please see the following link: https://app.jobvite.com/j?cj=obl6gfwC&s=Civil_Service_jobs.

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

· UK nationals

· nationals of the Republic of Ireland

· nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK

· nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window) https://www.gov.uk/settled-status-eu-citizens-families

· nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)

· individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020

· Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationality-rules

This Vacancy is closed to applications.