About the job

Job summary

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 government more efficient.

Our teams are organised around delivering on our priorities. These are:

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

We are recruiting 2 Developers for the GOV.UK Notify team - one of our common service platform teams.

GOV.UK Notify makes it easy for public sector service teams to send emails, text messages and letters.

Since its launch 7 years ago, use of GOV.UK Notify has grown exponentially. Today, more than 1,300 organisations use it and we’ve sent over 7.9 billion notifications.

Organisations that use GOV.UK Notify range from government departments to county councils, NHS trusts to GP surgeries, and fire services to ambulance trusts. It is used in a huge variety of ways, including to alert people to flood warnings, remind soldiers of their medical appointments, update people on their passport applications or inform prison wardens of their rotas.

GOV.UK Notify is a majestically monolithic Python Flask web application with several smaller supporting microservices. We use SQLAlchemy to talk to a Postgres database and make heavy use of Celery on Amazon SQS for asynchronous task queues. We’re currently migrating all our services to Amazon ECS Fargate, which we manage through Terraform. For frontend we rely heavily on the GOV.UK Design System using Jinja for templating.

We code in the open and you can take a look at our code on Github.

Job description

As a Developer on GOV.UK Notify you’ll:

• work as a part of a multi-disciplinary agile team, collaborating with frontend developers, designers, content designers and product owners and actively participating in user research to ensure your code puts users first at all stages of development
• write clean, secure Python code following a test-driven approach
• implement tooling and automation to support development, operation, reliability, security and continuous improvement of the systems you work on
• support the live operation of GOV.UK Notify during office hours, answering support queries from users, monitoring error rates and responding to incidents
• share your work and lessons you’ve learned with others through blog posts, show and tells, and the option of presenting at conferences or meetups
• use your learning and development budget to develop your career

Person specification

We’re interested in people who have:

• experience in back-end development, ideally with knowledge of web development in Python
• an awareness of technologies used for cloud based web applications, such as databases, backups, CDNs and containerisation, and of Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS
• understanding of software design principles, and an ability to apply them
• familiarity with modern software development approaches such as automated testing, test driven development, continuous integration, pair programming, code review and version control
• understanding of common web security risks such as OWASP Top 10, and the corresponding mitigations
• enjoy researching and learning new programming tools and techniques and sharing their skills with others
• have experience working in a collaborative environment, and an understanding of the benefits of agile and multi-disciplinary approaches
• a desire to use their skills and experience to make a genuine difference, and to work on important services that are used by millions of people

Benefits

The benefits of working at GDS

There are many benefits of working at GDS, including:

• flexible hybrid working with flexi-time and the option to work part-time or condensed hours
• a Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 27%
• 25 days of annual leave, increasing by a day each year up to a maximum of 30 days
• an extra day off for The King’s birthday
• an in-year bonus scheme to recognise high performance
• career progression and coaching, including a training budget for personal development
• paid volunteering leave
• a focus on wellbeing with access to an employee assistance programme
• job satisfaction from making government services easier to use and more inclusive for people across the UK
• advances on pay, including for travel season tickets
• death in service benefits
• cycle to work scheme and facilities
• access to children's holiday play schemes across different locations in central London
• access to an employee discounts scheme
• 10 learning days per year
• volunteering opportunities (5 special leave days per year)
• access to a suite of learning activities through Civil Service learning

GDS offers hybrid working for all employees. This means that everyone does some working from home and also spends some time in their local office. You’ll agree to your hybrid working arrangement with your line manager in line with your preferences and business needs.

Any move to Government Digital Service from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk

Things you need to know

Selection process details

The standard selection process for roles at GDS consists of:

• a simple application screening process - We only ask for a CV and cover letter of up to 750 words. Important tip - please ensure that your cover letter includes how you meet the skills and experience listed in the “person specification” section above
• a 20 minute telephone interview (may not be required depending on the volume of applicants)
• a 45 minute pair programming technical exercise - you'll work with a GDS engineer to solve a self-contained programming problem given to you in writing. You'll be asked to discuss the problem with the GDS engineer, devise a plan for solving it, and then to write code to solve the problem. As well as your programming and unit testing skills we'll be evaluating how you communicate and collaborate, and how you break down the problem. You'll use your own development environment for this (conducted over video conferencing)
• a 1 hour face-to-face interview (conducted over video conferencing)

Depending on how many applications we get, there might also be an extra stage before the video interview, for example a phone interview or a technical exercise.

In the Civil Service, we use Success Profiles to evaluate your skills and ability. This gives us the best possible chance of finding the right person for the job, increases performance and improves diversity and inclusivity. We’ll be assessing your technical abilities, skills, experience and behaviours that are relevant to this role.

For this role we’ll be assessing you against the following Civil Service Behaviours: 

• working together
• changing and improving
• making effective decisions

We’ll also be assessing your experience and specialist technical skills against the following skills defined in the Digital, Data and Technology Profession Capability Framework for the Developer role:

• Programming and build (software engineering)
• Availability and capacity management
• Development process optimisation
• Information security
• Modern standards approach
• Prototyping
• Service support
• Systems design
• Systems integration
• User focus

Candidates that do not pass the interview but have demonstrated an acceptable standard may be considered for similar roles at a lower grade.

A reserve list will be held for a period of 12 months, from which further appointments can be made.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability status.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

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)
• 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)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.