Senior Software Engineer at Department for Work & Pensions, UK Office/Remote, 12 Months, £Contract Rate

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy. As the UK's biggest public service department, it administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to around 20 million claimants and customers. As such, we operate on a scale that is almost unmatched anywhere in Europe and most people in Britain come into contact with us at some point in their lives.Working with DWP, you will be helping us to drive our priorities to:Run an effective welfare system that enables people to achieve financial independence by providing assistance and guidance into employmentIncrease saving for, and security in later lifeCreate a fair and affordable welfare system which improves the life chances of childrenDeliver outstanding services to our customers and claimantsDeliver efficiently: transform the way we deliver our services to reduce costs and increase productivity..

 

Description:Core PurposeAs a Senior Software Engineer you will be a skilled Practitioner and a role model in software craftsmanship. Responsible for ensuring best practices are adhered to across the department and guiding teams on how to deliver quality software products. You will assist in the design of software products that make up citizen services in collaboration with Architecture and Engineering principles. With a focus on operational stability, robustness, resilience, availability and quality you will be accountable for the code your teams produce.Summary of the Role and key responsibilitiesDesign and lead the strategies for building reusable libraries and services;Own the development of medium-long term strategies for product lines and the Software Engineering Community;Identify and support the resolution of infrastructure faults;Provide 3rd line support on products developed, including out of hours support as and when required;Lead multiple Software Engineering teams providing technical leadership and guidance. Including coaching and mentoring your team and their professional development;Contribute and set strategic direction for product team and the wider Software Engineering community;Lead the collaboration & sharing of knowledge and good practice with the wider software engineering community;Lead and support community discussions about best practice within Software Engineering.Technical Skills requiredCollaborates with others when necessary to review specifications and uses these agreed standards and tools to design, code, test, correct and document programmes or scripts of medium to high complexity, using the right standards and tools.Understands the difference between user needs and desires of the user. Has experience in meeting user needs across a variety of channels. Able to integrate digital analytics with qualitative data, such as user surveys and user research, to develop hypotheses for testing. Can offer recommendations on the best tools and methods to be used. Able to collaborate with user researchers and can sell/represent users internally. Understands the difference between user needs and desires of the user. Able to champion user research to focus on all users. Can prioritise and defines approaches to understand the user story, guiding others in doing so.Uses a modern standards approach competently and guides others in so doing.Designs systems characterised by medium levels of risk, impact and business or technical complexity. Selects appropriate design standards, methods and tools and ensures they are applied effectively. Reviews the systems designs of others to ensure selection of appropriate technology, efficient use of resources and integration of multiple systems and technology.Defines and designs the integration build. Able to co-ordinate build activities and understands how to undertake and support integration testing activities.Sees the bigger picture by taking groups of services, investigating how to get the best of underlying services.Knowledge and Experience required:Recent experience of open-source technologies, mainly Java.Developing on cloud based environments, particularly AWS.A good understanding of TDD and BDD.SQL and noSQL database applications such as Postgres and MongoDB.The skills to build up a useful, robust automated test suite to support a continuous deployment environment.Knowledge and experience of APIs, RESTful services and Microservice Architectures.

 

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.Disability Confident As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, DWP guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group.Armed Forces CommitmentDWP guarantees to interview veterans or spouses / partners of military personnel who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates / military spouses or partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group.In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different.