Senior Developer in Manchester

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is the digital centre of government — we are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government. Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government, by:

• joining up public sector services
• harnessing the power of AI for the public good
• strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
• elevating leadership and investing in talent
• funding for outcomes and procuring for growth and innovation
• committing to transparency and driving accountability

We are home to the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (I.AI), the world‑leading GOV.UK and at the forefront of coordinating the UK’s geospatial strategy and activity. We lead the Government Digital and Data function and champion the work of digital teams across government. We’re part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and employ more than 1,000 people all over the UK, with hubs in Manchester, London and Bristol.

The Government Digital Service is where talent translates into impact. From your first day, you’ll be working with some of the world’s most highly‑skilled digital professionals, all contributing their knowledge to make change on a national scale. Join us for rewarding work that makes a difference across the UK. You’ll solve some of the nation’s highest‑priority digital challenges, helping millions of people access services they need.

GOV.UK Notify makes it easy for public sector service teams to send emails, text messages and letters. Since its launch in 2016, use of GOV.UK Notify has grown exponentially. Today, more than 1,600 organisations and 10,976 services use it. We’ve sent over 10.8 billion notifications and continue to send millions more notifications each day.

GOV.UK Notify codes in the open, and you can take a look at our code on Github and read our blogs. GOV.UK Notify is a web application built with Python and Flask, running on Gunicorn. It is supported by several microservices, also written in Python, utilising frameworks and libraries such as Celery, Eventlet, SQLAlchemy, etc. Additionally, GOV.UK Notify utilises AWS RDS (Postgres), AWS SQS, AWS ElastiCache, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana and other related services. Concourse CI and Terraform are used to run build‑pipelines and manage our infrastructure. For the frontend, we follow the GOV.UK Design System, making use of GOV.UK Frontend components and patterns.

As a Senior Developer in GOV.UK Notify you’ll:

• work as part of a multi-disciplinary agile team, collaborating with frontend developers, content designers, product managers and user researchers to ensure your code puts users first at all stages of development
• write clean and secure code following a test‑driven approach
• implement tools to support development and continuous improvement of the systems you work on
• support the live operation of the services we run during office hours, answering support queries from users, monitoring error rates and responding to incidents
• 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, show and tells, with the option of presenting at conferences and meetups
• use your learning and development budget to develop your career

Person specification:

• have experience in back‑end development, ideally with knowledge of web development in Python, NodeJS or Java
• have experience working with cloud based web applications, with technologies such as databases, caching, CDNs, containerisation and Unix‑like operating systems
• have thorough understanding of software design principles, and an ability to apply them
• have proven experience of modern software development approaches such as automated testing, test driven development, continuous integration, pair programming, code review and version control
• have 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
• have a desire to use their skills and experience to make a genuine difference, and to work on important services that are relied upon by millions of people
• provide technical leadership within 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
• take responsibility for developing others, through line management and/or mentoring
• help recruit other developers and, where appropriate, get involved with sifting and interviewing

DSIT cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign. DSIT holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not qualify.

Seniority level: Mid‑Senior level

Employment type: Full‑time

Job function: Information Technology, Consulting, and Engineering

Industries: Government Relations Services, Government Administration, and Information Services