About the job

Job summary

This position is based Nationally

Job description

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

Location: National*

Closing Date: 3rd April

Interviews: w/c 15th April

Grade: Grade 7

(MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer)

Salary: London: £58,847 - £78,225 (which may include an allowance of up to £19,378)

  National: £54,358 - £73,450 (which may include an allowance of up to £19,092)

Working pattern: Full-time, part-time, flexible working

Contract Type: Perm

Vacancy number: 85233

*We are currently offering hybrid working which includes 2 days per week in your local office. Office locations can be found HERE

The Role:

We’re recruiting for a Lead Software Developer here at the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) and His Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS) at Justice Digital, to be part of one of our warm and collaborative teams.

We really want to hear from people who value making a difference and building user-centred services using modern tools and practices as part of a highly collaborative team. We strongly encourage empathetic approaches and cross functional working and are looking for people to help build on this culture of agility and openness.

As an example, you could be helping teams that are:

• Building services to enhance applications for legal aid
• Developing services to process and review applications for legal aid caseworkers
• Providing access to court data
• Improving outcomes for offenders by building tools to manage rehabilitation services
• Providing tools and information to help Prison Officers perform their duties
• Implementing solutions to help teams authenticate our users or link up to our heritage systems to help the flow of information around the organisation.

To help picture your life at MoJ Justice Digital please take a look at our blog and our Digital and Technology strategy 2025

Key Responsibilities:

In addition to hands-on development, you will inspire, mentor, coach, manage and lead Software Developers within a business domain. You will 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 have responsibility for one team, or two small related teams, and report to the Principal Developers.

Technical Leadership:

• 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 Developers 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!

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 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 28.97% from April 1st 2024 (Contribution Rates)
• 25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the Kings’ 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 Carers & 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:

Essential:

• You have experience making and guiding complex technical decisions and contributing to technical strategy
• You have experience nurturing a culture of good software practice that makes change easy
• 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 have experience either coaching or managing other people
• You have been involved in building or contributing to a community of practice
• Contribution towards the team e.g. being point of contact / tech lead, working with stakeholders, helping with DM/PM activities, improving processes
• Contribution towards other developers: e.g. coaching / training / inspiring; encouraging L&D

Willingness to be assessed against  the requirements for BPSS clearance.

We welcome the unique contribution diverse applicants bring and do not discriminate on the basis of culture, ethnicity, race, nationality or national origin, age, sex, gender identity or expression, religion or belief, disability status, sexual orientation, educational or social background or any other factor.

Our values are Purpose, Humanity, Openness and Togetherness. Find out more here about how we celebrate diversity and an inclusive culture in our workplace.

Our Tech Stack:

We rely on Java, Ruby, Python or NodeJS 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..

Person specification

Please refer to Job Description

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £54,358, Ministry of Justice contributes £15,165 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

How to Apply:

Candidates must submit a CV and Supporting statement (750 words) which describes how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above.

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

• Leadership
• Working Together
• Developing Self & Others

Your application will be reviewed 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. We may also include a technical test/exercise.

Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on Software Development experience will be conducted prior to the sift.

Should you be unsuccessful in the role that you have applied for, but demonstrated the capability for a role at a lower level, we reserve the right to discuss this opportunity with you and potentially offer you the position without the need for a further application.

A reserve list may be held for a period of up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made.

Terms & Conditions:

Please review our 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

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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. 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.