IT Development Lead in Belfast

Join to apply for the IT Development Lead role at Progressive Building Society. Location: Progressive Bldg Soc, Progressive House, 33-37 Wellington Place.

Progressive Building Society is a leading local financial institution with a proud reputation for customer service excellence. Our purpose is to encourage local people to save and become homeowners, through our personal, caring & common-sense approach, essentially nurturing financial well-being for current and future generations. With a strong high street presence, our vision is to be the savings and mortgage provider of choice in Northern Ireland. The Society is continuing to modernise and improve through its operational resilience processes, strong customer experience including self-services capabilities, integration between platforms, automation of processes, supporting our community and caring about our environmental impact.

What will you be doing? An exciting opportunity has arisen within the IT department for an IT Development Lead. This role will be based in Head Office and will be a blend of office and home working. As a small team working on enterprise solutions, we are looking for the successful candidate to strengthen our internal processes and to work collaboratively with colleagues across the Society. The Information Technology & Change team is heavily involved in programmes of work to ensure we take opportunities to strengthen our digital services and new way of working, ensuring we provide resilient, performance, reliable and fit for purpose systems and processes.

The successful candidate will be accountable for managing and delivering the internal IT development strategy and roadmap, ensuring work is delivered to agreed policies, standards and methodologies.

• To manage the in-house IT development team member’s competencies, performance and personal development to agreed frameworks and standards, and assign workload, changes and project tasks to the in-house software developers.
• To ensure the adoption of ITIL, Software Development and DevOps processes within the IT Department and IT Development Team, ensuring processes are delivered within agreed SLA’s.
• Working to Progressive’s development standards to develop applications which integrate with and enhance the functionality of our existing systems in order to improve the experience of our business users and members.
• To manage the development roadmap aligned to prioritisation processes.
• To report progress and KPI’s on the in-house developers and development roadmap to the different governance committees and to prioritise them accordingly with business needs.
• To be responsible for the full software development lifecycle utilising both Agile and Waterfall methodologies as appropriate.
• To analyse business needs with stakeholders to gather requirements for new and existing projects.
• To provide information into the design and development of applications and solutions using new and existing technologies.
• To participate in research and development efforts to ensure secure and efficient coding plus the implementation of new technologies and efficiencies.
• To develop and maintain software development policies and standards.
• To ensure developments / sprints are delivered on time to agreed internal development standards.
• To support debugging and testing of code.
• Provide service support for production and non-production services as part of ITIL processes.
• Provide advice, guidance and support to other IT domains and team as required.

• At least 3 years commercial experience in the delivery of software development and engineering.
• Practical experience of: Software development related systems such as Git, DevOps, Visual Studio and related.
• Designing scalable, secure, and maintainable systems built from the assessment of business requirements.
• The application of quality assurance and security principles for coding practices.
• Agile & Scrum methodologies including iterative planning, sprint management, and adaptability.
• DevOps practices including CI/CD pipelines, Docker, Kubernetes, cloud platforms (AWS, Azure).
• Key development languages including Apex, JavaScript, .NET, C++ and conversant in REST and SOAP API’s.

• Experience with key development languages including SOQL, Lightning Web Components & VisualForce (Salesforce).
• Supporting the development and maintenance of Enterprise Architecture.
• Knowledge of one or more cloud technologies such as Azure, Amazon Web Services or similar.
• Relevant industry certifications such as Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate, Python Institute Certifications (PCAP, PCPP), C++ Certified Professional Programmer (CPP) & Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional (CSSLP).

• Competitive Salary
• Hybrid Working model
• Annual KPI Bonus Scheme
• Excellent pension with up to 20% employer pension contribution
• Life Assurance Scheme
• Group Income Protection
• Health cash plan with money back on dental, optical costs etc.
• Generous holidays – 25 days plus up to 12 Bank Holidays
• Day off for your birthday
• Holiday purchase scheme
• Excellent training and volunteering opportunities
• Cycle to work scheme
• Wellbeing initiatives

We know that looking for a career means so much more than just finding a job. At Progressive, we want to help you find your happy place to work. We firmly believe in encouraging our employees to achieve the right balance between their work and personal lives, delivering access to and promoting family-friendly policies. This not only increases employee satisfaction but also enables Progressive to meet the needs of our Members and supports the Society in being positioned as one of the most successful financial institutions in Northern Ireland.

To work for Progressive is to be part of something special. We strive to nurture and develop our employees in the evolving and fast-paced financial services industry. We aim to provide an inclusive and respectful working environment, where everyone recognises the importance and impact of teamwork. We celebrate staff diversity and work hard to ensure that our staff members feel valued as individuals and respected for their contribution to our success. We offer opportunities for our staff to work at the heart of our communities and make real differences to our Members’ lives. We do not subscribe to a long-hours culture, instead valuing family life and supporting our staff to balance work and family commitments.