Developer in Chelmsford

Fixed Term / Secondment (12 months), Full Time £52,571 to £61,848 per annum

Location: Chelmsford

Working Style: Anywhere worker

Closing Date: 30th July 2026

This is a hybrid-working role contractually based in Chelmsford. You will work from the Chelmsford office at least one day per month, depending on business need.

The role is to help us implement and use a new Placecube Low Code system to create new resident-facing services. We are recruiting a number of Developer roles to cover the following:

• JavaScript / Type Script
• HTML/CSS
• Java (Spring OSGi modules)
• REST APIs
• API design Middleware / ESB patterns

Experience of Liferay front end frameworks would be highly desirable.

Essex County Council is ambitious and by 2030 it will be one of the most forward-looking, effective and financially sustainable Councils in the country. ECC will be a leading-edge digital council that drives excellent customer service with transformation at the heart of service excellence.

The Product and Delivery team will provide product leadership and direction for essex.gov.uk. They will develop a bold product vision, translating this into a roadmap of prioritised deliverables, planning and managing the different phases of the product delivery lifecycle, iterating a product over time to meet user needs, and ensuring products are built effectively, on time and to budget, setting high standards to ensure products meet user needs. The team will also be responsible for artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation capabilities.

This role will lead, monitor, optimise and continuously improve the delivery of software components so that the Council can provide simple user experiences and achieve better outcomes for people and businesses. They will be responsible for leading the team writing clean, accessible code that is open by default and easy for others to reuse, developing software which meets user needs and creates meaningful interactions and relationships with users.

Role responsibilities:

• Provide oversight for in-house product development to ensure it is contributing to delivering a secure, high performing and sustainable software engineering platform which continues to reduce risk, optimise performance and cost, and support innovation.
• Deliver secure, easy to use, high performing and sustainable frontend services and APIs that support rapid development and regular iteration of services that meet user needs.
• Lead a robust architecture approach that delivers effective, sustainable use of cloud services and that makes provision for future portability.
• Deliver secure, easy to use, high performing and sustainable components and microservices that support rapid development and regular iteration of services that meet user needs.
• Develop quality solutions which are supportable and maintainable, break down complex issues and business problems into elegant and simple solutions, adhere to good development practices and keep in mind opportunities to build common services and components that can be reused.
• Work closely with the Test Team to produce test plans.
• Evaluate supplier integration portals to understand the technical feasibility with our existing infrastructure and tech stack.
• Set the engineering standards and provide assurance that ECC’s software solutions, microservices and solutions architecture continue to meet good practice standards and evolve to adopt practices role-modelled by digitally-native organisations globally.
• Work with the other senior members of the architecture, design and delivery teams to identify risks, assist in risk assessment, manage agreed actions, and monitor the status of risks on an ongoing basis.
• Actively review outcomes and feed these into future improvements.
• Use Agile methodology and apply an agile mindset to all aspects of your work.
• Create a fast-paced, evolving environment and use an iterative method and flexible approach to enable rapid delivery.
• Coach and lead teams in Agile practices, determining the right approach for the team to take and evaluating this through the life of a project, acting as a recognised expert and advocate for Agile approaches, continuously reflecting and challenging the team, promoting the generous sharing of expertise and creating opportunities for continuous learning and development.

Specific individual and shared targets and objectives are defined annually within the performance management framework.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

• Educated to Degree level or equivalent in experience in a relevant subject.
• Experience of delivering digital projects and products/prototypes within a complex and diverse context.
• Evidence of delivering and using agile methods balancing multiple priorities, dealing with ambiguity and evidencing impact.
• Knowledge of relevant programming language, an understanding of UI/UX principles and strong problem-solving skills.
• Knowledge and practical application of the Government Service Standards, Government Accessibility Regulations and Information Governance principles.
• Excellent written, verbal communication and presentational skills.
• Excellent customer service skills.
• Evidence of continuing professional development and expert knowledge in relevant professional area.

Essex County Council is proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We’re committed to interview all disabled applicants who choose to apply under our Job Interview Scheme if they meet the minimum requirements of the job. Please speak to our Recruiters if you require any reasonable adjustments during the process. We’re also committed to interview all veterans and care leavers, who meet the minimum requirements of the role for which they are applying.

Once you’ve secured your role within Essex County Council you will receive many great employee benefits, including support for unpaid carers and flexible working arrangements to accommodate their needs.

At Essex County Council, we value integrity and ethical behaviour. We kindly ask that you embrace our code of conduct and the Nolan principles, including throughout the recruitment process. Your commitment to these standards helps us maintain a positive and respectful workplace for everyone.

As part of employment with Essex County Council (ECC) should your role require a DBS check you will be required to register with the DBS update service. The DBS update service ensures all registered DBS certificates are kept up to date and allows authorised parties to view the status of your certificate. This is an annual subscription, and you will be responsible for ensuring this is maintained.

Essex County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults, and expects all employees and volunteers to share this commitment.

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If you have queries on this role or require anything further, please email resourcing.team@essex.gov.uk.