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 Senior Developers for the GOV.UK Forms, GOV.UK Pay and GOV.UK Notify teams, which are all part of Platforms & Services at GDS. 

GOV.UK Pay lets service teams across the public sector take online and over the phone card payments from their users quickly and easily. It also helps them manage their income, issue refunds and run financial reports. It provides a simple, accessible and secure payment experience to millions of people. Since its launch over 7 years ago, GOV.UK Pay has processed over 69 million transactions for over 350 organisations, with a value of £4.3 billion. The next few years are an opportunity for us to radically improve how the public sector handles payments. Read more about GOV.UK Pay on the GDS blog.

GOV.UK Forms allows civil servants to create accessible online forms in minutes without needing technical knowledge. Our vision is for every form on GOV.UK to be accessible, easy to use and quick to process. The platform is in private beta and recently opened up to more services as part of an Early Access phase. The team are continuing to research and build new features whilst working towards a public beta launch. Read more about GOV.UK Forms on the GDS blog.

GOV.UK Notify makes it easy for public sector service teams to send emails, text messages and letters. GOV.UK Notify is used by a wide range of teams, 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. In the last 7 years, use of GOV.UK Notify has grown exponentially. Today, more than 1,400 organisations use it and we’ve sent over 7.9 billion notifications.

Job description

As a Senior Developer in Platforms & Services, you’ll:

• work as part of a multi-disciplinary agile team, getting involved with every part of the lifecycle of a service, from user research to continuously deploying code to production in our AWS environments
• build robust, performant web services to serve a variety of citizen and government needs, taking responsibility for the quality of code you produce
• implement tooling and automation to support development, operation, reliability, security and continuous improvement of the systems you work on
• support the live operation of the services we run, and participate in out-of-hours support rotas where necessary - you'll be paid an allowance, and a further hourly payment, for any duties you perform when on call
• share your work and the things you’ve learned through blog posts and show and tells, with the option of presenting at conferences and meetups
• provide technical leadership within team, advising and working with developers to identify the best solutions
• take responsibility for developing others, through line management and/or mentoring
• use your learning and development budget to develop your career
• help recruit other developers and, where appropriate, get involved with sifting and interviewing

To learn more about what GOV.UK Pay developers do, read about a typical day on the Pay team. GOV.UK Pay’s code is also visible on Github.

GOV.UK Form’s code is also available on Github, read about our Early Access launch and recent feature developments. 

GOV.UK Notify also codes in the open, and you can see what we’ve been working on lately on our roadmap.

Person specification

The skills we would expect a Developer to have: 

• experience in back-end development, with detailed knowledge of ideally either Ruby, Python, Java or NodeJS
• an awareness of technologies used for cloud based web applications, such as databases, backups, CDNs, containerisation, and serverless computing
• understanding of software design principles, and an ability to apply them
• familiarity with modern software development approaches such as automated testing, test driven development (TDD), 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

In addition to the above, Senior Developers would also:

• provide technical leadership within a team, advising and working with developers to identify the best solutions
• take responsibility for solving complex issues, drawing upon a broad knowledge of web technologies
• have proven experience of modern software development approaches including automated testing, test driven development, continuous integration, pair programming, code review and version control
• have experience in management, helping colleagues with their career development and coaching more junior staff members
• share knowledge among the GDS teams, ensuring that your team is understood by others and understanding the working of the wider organisation

If you meet a few of those criteria but think that you might not meet every last one then don’t let that stop you from submitting an application.

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 75 minute 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
• leadership

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 Senior 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.