Software Developer

Job summary

We are looking for a Developer to work as part of the Data & Surveillance Services Division of the Digital & Data Directorate, UKHSA. You will be part of a team responsible for developing and supporting systems that support the organisation’s clinical and scientific teams in the delivery of our Health Protection capabilities.

Digital & Data
The UKHSA Digital & Data Directorate provides strategic leadership and oversight for developing and managing a common and bespoke suite of performant, modern, secure, data and analytical tools, services, platforms and applications, ensuring access to high quality data and analytics services, internally and externally.

Data & Surveillance Services
Based within the Digital & Data Directorate, the Data and Surveillance Services Division works across the organisation and with external partners to lead the design, development, maintenance and delivery of system which are accessible, interoperable and which improving health security outcomes. The Division supports the UKHSAs laboratory workflow and surveillance functions and is responsible it’s central bioinformatics service which delivers whole genome sequencing for pathogens of concern.

Working for your organisation

We pride ourselves as being an employer of choice, where Everyone Matters promoting equality of opportunity to actively encourage applications from everyone, including groups currently underrepresented in our workforce.

UKHSA ethos is to be an inclusive organisation for all our staff and stakeholders. To create, nurture and sustain an inclusive culture, where differences drive innovative solutions to meet the needs of our workforce and wider communities. We do this through celebrating and protecting differences by removing barriers and promoting equity and equality of opportunity for all.

Please visit our careers site for more information https://gov.uk/ukhsa/careers

Job description

• Develop & manage technical aspects of the software systems and services to meet user needs and integrate with databases and other repositories.
• Design solutions and services with security controls embedded, specifically engineered with mitigation of security threats as a core feature.
• Ensure software is flexibly developed so that it can be variably hosted on a range of computational environments including UKHSA’s servers, high performance computer infrastructure, and commercial cloud providers such as Amazon or Azure.
• Identify, diagnose and investigate technical problems, methodically applying appropriate tests and gathering sufficient information to enable a solution.
• Use the agreed specifications to design, code, test and document programs or scripts of medium-to-high complexity, using the right standards and tools. Ensure clean, secure and well-tested code.
• Write database code to modern standards including the advanced SQL and Oracle PL/SQL scripts that enable optimised complex processing of data within and between information systems and for egress of data from these systems for onward use.
• Ensure software code which is created, developed and maintained by the team is managed appropriately through the implementation of an appropriate source code repository which is aligned to the UKHSA technology strategy of UKHSA.
• Competently apply a modern standards approach in all aspects of design and development, producing detailed designs and effectively documenting all work using required standards, methods and tools, including prototyping tools.
• Develop & support databases and software applications used to support data collection, analysis and dissemination. This will include a drive towards automation and more resilient, reliable infrastructure.
• Coordinate with colleagues in the development of code using appropriate languages, established modern software engineering principles and design patterns, including the development of prototypes.
• Select and implement modern RAD (rapid application development) tools for prototyping and where appropriate, for implementation of minimal viable products.
• Contribute to the creation of standards and policies relating to these.
• Be responsible for ensuring that system availability, performance and data flow is monitored and to seek ways to make continuous improvements to improve resilience, data quality and to shape improvements in service delivery including improvements to development processes.
• Use software engineering practices that ensure compliance with information security and quality policies and procedures, designing solutions and services with security controls embedded, specifically engineered with mitigation of security threats as a core feature.
• Work with Technology group colleagues to coordinate and implement multidisciplinary approaches to data pipeline production and application/database hosting on various platforms, where necessary migrating current software solutions to new architectures.
• Select appropriate system designs characterised by medium levels of risk, impact, and business or technical complexity.
• Collaborate with colleagues to ensure that current best practice for software specification, development, testing and implementation is followed across the software development activities of the Division.
• Manage testing of software applications and databases to ensure that development is to agreed specifications, uses appropriate tools and adheres to commercial and UKHSA standards.
• Identify, locate and fix faults in systems both during development and after deployment to production environments including working with infrastructure colleagues to resolve issues that could cause loss of service. You will prioritise your work to ensure that organisation key services are kept available.
• Undertake training as required by UKHSA or for the specific requirements of projects and undertake any other duties commensurate with your grade.

Please note, the above list is not exhaustive.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

• Bachelor's degree (or higher) in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, or a closely related discipline. Alternatively, significant professional experience in software development, demonstrating equivalent knowledge and skills gained through industry practice.
• Experience of designing, developing and delivering large and complex software solutions
• Proven ability to write high quality software documentation and implementation of quality standards for coding among a team.
• Expert knowledge/experience of Microsoft development technologies including, Visual Studio .Net.
• Experience of implementing a containerised approach to code deployment across development teams and a moving from on premise to cloud native development.
• Experience of SQL, the MS SQL Server suite, Transact-SQL
• Proven skills in at least one object-oriented programming language, such as C#, and intermediate knowledge of Python
• Knowledge of deploying code to enterprise architectures and the cloud, including the use of containers. Experience of OpenShift and/or Kubernetes
• Experience of Internet Information Services (IIS), web application deployment, administration and security
• Experience of the use of Git, GitHub actions and associated tools for version control, integration, deployment or another industry standard version control and CI/CD tools.
• An understanding of and commitment to equality of opportunity and good working relationships, both in terms of day-to-day working practices, but