Lead Developer – GOV.UK

Tower Hamlets, London
Government Digital Service

Salary 60,000 – 90,000 GBP per year

Requirements:

– The salary range for this role is £68,020 – £92,500 (London) / £61,880 – £81,400 (National) The base salary of this grade is £64,500 (London) / £60,500 (National). Any offer made above this will be made up with a specialist pay allowance.

– have strong software development skills in Ruby, experience with Ruby on Rails and current knowledge of modern software development practices

– have experience of leading and continuously improving practices such as test-driven development (TDD), continuous integration, continuous delivery and
DevOps

– have experience of being a technical leader across multiple teams or have had an impact beyond a single team

– have experience of leading software development work in multi-disciplinary agile environments

– can effectively communicate and influence at a programme leadership level and cross-GDS technical leadership level

– have experience in development and operation of modern large scale cloud-based web services using container orchestration platforms such as kubernetes

– be experienced in line management, helping colleagues with their career development and coaching more junior staff members

– have a good understanding of security in operational services from end-to-end

Responsibilities:

– This role is for the GOV.UK team, which runs the website and the publishing system that powers it. GOV.UK is one of the most visited websites in the UK, with 1.4 billion visits in 2022. Our purpose is to make it simple for everyone to interact with government.

Almost all of GOV.UK’s code is open source, developed in the open on GitHub. Most applications use Ruby on Rails, and are deployed as a cluster of microservices to Amazon Web Services. Teams work in agile ways, using best practices such as continuous delivery and test driven development. You can read more about our work on the Inside GOV.UK Blog.

As a Lead Developer on GOV.UK, you’ll use your engineering skills and experience to support GOV.UK as it grows into new channels, formats, and types of interaction. You’ll work across the user experience product area, which owns the GOV.UK website and other public facing services. You will provide leadership across multiple teams. Expect a mixture of hands on technical work, people management, engineering design and technical strategy.

As a Lead Developer you’ll:

– strengthen engineering culture in your area, supporting continuous improvement, advocating for good practices, good design and code quality, removing toil and drag factors

– work with other discipline leads and senior management to proactively plan technical delivery work, making sure to balance long term engineering sustainability with short term delivery pressures, advocating for technical quality and bringing practical considerations to high level designs

– be a visible leader and role model in your area, championing diversity and inclusion in how we work

– act as a digital ambassador across government, sharing our experiences through public speaking and blog posts

– help GDS test and apply emerging technologies and practices, contributing to the GDS Way

Technologies:

– Ruby
– Kubernetes
– Backend
– DevOps

More:

GDS exists to help government make brilliant public services that empower people in the UK. We work at the very centre of government to drive digital transformation, focused on users. We build and maintain common platforms, products and tools for others to use and create great public services that are accessible, inclusive and easy to use. We also work with departments to identify patterns, share learning and create change to make a government more efficient.

Our teams are organised around delivering on our priorities, these are:

– Make it easier for people to find what they are looking for on GOV.UK
– Build common service platforms to make it simpler and cheaper to build quality digital services
– Promote agile, user-centred design practices both in the UK and across the world