Senior Software Engineer - EXT

Location: The ONS operates an adaptable hybrid working model across the UK, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations working between office and remote throughout the week. The locations for this role are Newport and Titchfield (Fareham). All colleagues are required to work from their contractually allocated site for at least 40% of their working time. The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.

Job Summary: Are you an accomplished Software Engineer looking for a role where you can make a real impact, using your technical experience to enable us to deliver our Statistics for the Public Good strategy for the UK? We are looking for an experienced Software Engineer to join us. We are looking for forward-thinking people with a passion for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery working on the latest cloud and software applications. You will have an eye for detail and stakeholder management skills to provide technical and procedural expertise working within our Digital Services (DS) Directorate.

A Bit About Digital Applications: This division is responsible for the ongoing development and support of numerous statistical services and products that are core to the ONS. These include newer products as well as legacy platforms and systems. We work with the business areas to provide enhancements and delivery of new products and services to enable their business benefit with users’ needs at the forefront. We utilise various tools and technologies to do this and engage with a number of external suppliers to provide secure and stable services.

What we do: Within the Digital Applications Division, we enable survey design and deliver the collection, survey delivery and critical processing of survey data, ensuring systems are reliable and support the end-to-end flow of data, while continuously improving our suite of products. Our teams focus on maintaining high-performing live services, while also driving the modernisation of our technology estate and reduction of legacy systems, helping to create more efficient and sustainable platforms.

Who we work with: Given the nature of the live systems and applications we are supporting we work with users across ONS every day. Generally, colleagues outside of Digital Services undertake the Product Owner and Senior User roles and we work collaboratively with them to define the future roadmap of enhancements and priorities for development.

Job Description: A Software Engineer designs, develops, runs, tests and improves software that meets user needs. They are responsible for writing clean, secure code following a test-driven approach. They create code that is open by default and easy for others to use. A senior developer delivers and integrates complicated or higher risk software to form a complete service.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and enhance software solutions to meet user story needs.
• Follow best practice guidelines and help to improve those guidelines.
• Write clean, secure, and well-tested code.
• Coach and mentor colleagues.
• Support a continuous delivery environment, using effective delivery and deployment techniques.
• Operate the services they build and identify issues in production.
• Design and execute a range of test techniques.

Person Specification:

Essential Skills Criteria:

• Programming and build (software engineering) – design, code, test and document medium to high complexity programs, contribute to code reviews and give constructive feedback.
• Systems design – design systems with medium risk and impact, select appropriate standards and methods, review others’ designs, and communicate requirements with business and technical colleagues.
• Test engineering – design, implement and execute functional and non-functional testing techniques, communicate results, prioritize defects and drive improvements.
• Modern standards approach – apply modern standards and practices, develop and refine standards, and coach others.
• Service support – identify, isolate and fix faults, investigate undocumented issues, triage, build stories and document processes.

Behaviours:

• Changing and improving
• Managing a quality service
• Delivering at pace

Technical Skills:

• Programming and build (Practitioner)
• Test engineering (Practitioner)
• Service support (Practitioner)
• Communication between technical and non-technical (Practitioner)

Benefits: Alongside your salary of £44,050, the Office for National Statistics contributes £12,761 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our valued colleagues across the organisation.