Senior Developer (Java)

Job summary

Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you're seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it’s really like to work at HMRC.

Visit our YouTube channel to watch the full series and come and discover your potential.

At HMRC we are committed to creating a great place to work for all our colleagues; an inclusive and respectful environment that reflects the diversity of the society we serve.

We want to maximise the potential of everyone who chooses to work for us and we offer a range of flexible working patterns and support to make a fulfilling career at HMRC accessible to you.

Diverse perspectives and experiences are critical to our success and we welcome applications from all people from all backgrounds with the experience and skills needed to perform this role.

At HMRC, we are already one of the most digital organisations in the UK. We have one of the largest data sources, and we're creating a world-class IT function. HMRC is building a modern, digital tax administration.

With 50 million customers to serve, over 60 thousand colleagues to support, and £600 billion to collect to fund UK Plc, our IT operation is huge. Operating at this level isn't for everyone, but those ready for the challenge will find unique opportunities to work with advanced technologies and create lasting impact.

Chief Digital and Information Office (CDIO) set the technology direction for HMRC and deliver the high-level design for all IT solutions.

We are responsible for building and running HMRC IT services along with providing IT change and operational support.

The Borders and Trade Delivery Group are responsible for the end-to-end service management and development of over 140 separate services, from the generation of Trade Statistics to the administration of Customs and Excise duties.

This is an exciting role as a key member of the delivery team, collaborating with partners throughout the full delivery lifecycle to ensure delivery and support of highest-quality software products.

Our developers work closely with business analysts, testers and product owners within a truly collaborative environment.

Job description

As a Senior Java Developer within the Java Development Guild in CDIO Borders & Trade, you will be responsible for leading the design and development of clean, secure code following a test-driven approach, as well as maintenance and continuous improvement of Java-based services and applications across both legacy and modern platforms.

This role spans the full service lifecycle, from greenfield development and service transition to support and enhancement of live services, security updates and defect resolution. It also provides senior-level technical leadership across projects and live support work, acting as a system subject matter expert and as an Intelligent Client on internal and supplier-led deliveries.

In addition to hands-on development responsibilities, the Senior Java Developer plays a key role in setting technical direction, upholding engineering standards, mentoring and line managing junior developers, and ensuring services are secure, robust, supportable and aligned to business needs.

Person specification

The Senior Java Developer role requires a strong combination of advanced technical expertise, leadership capability, service support knowledge and stakeholder management skills.

This role will suit an experienced Java Developer who is proactive and self-driven, able to anticipate risks and opportunities, take ownership of outcomes, and drive progress while maintaining high standards for quality, security and operational performance.

• Proactive and self-driven: spots issues early, initiates improvements, and follows through without needing close supervision.
• Strategic thinker with strong technical judgement: able to balance delivery speed, risk, cost and long-term maintainability.
• Coaching mindset: mentors more junior engineers and promotes knowledge sharing.
• Quality and security focused: advocates for clean code, test-driven development, secure-by-design principles and strong assurance practices.
• Collaborative communicator: works effectively with product, architecture, operations and delivery partners, translating between technical and non-technical audiences.
• Resilient under pressure: acts as a calm escalation point during incidents and high-risk decisions, staying focused on outcomes and learning.

Key responsibilities

The key responsibilities of the Senior Java Developer role across design, development, maintenance and support of complex full stack Java applications and services include:

• Designing secure, scalable, resilient and supportable solutions with strong engineering controls and practices.
• Writing, reviewing, and assuring clean, reusable, testable and secure code, using TDD and quality-focused development practices.
• Supporting systems integration, interface design and testing across multiple systems and environments.
• Supporting live services through a combination of normal, and out of hours support. Working on incident resolution, bug fixing, security updates, service improvements, diagnosing integration issues across a complex landscape.
• Leading or contributing to code reviews, design reviews, technical assurance and development governance and ensuring development and support activity is documented and delivered in line with agreed governance, standards, controls and policies.
• Acting as a technical Subject Matter Expert and collaborating with architects, business analysts, testers, delivery managers, product owners and other disciplines throughout the delivery lifecycle.
• Providing Intelligent Client capability on supplier-led and mixed-delivery projects, ensuring alignment with HMRC standards, quality and security requirements. This includes managing knowledge transfer from suppliers and contractors into internal teams.
• Continuous improvement of engineering practices, tools, processes, standards and service robustness.
• Guild Leadership including Recruitment (workforce planning and training needs) and Staff development (Mentoring, coaching and line managing junior developers, supporting wider capability growth.)

Additionally, the post holder will work normal office hours though may be required to occasionally work outside of normal working hours (for example to support software releases). The post holder will be required to form part of a 24/7 on-call Rota involving out of hours remote support.

Essential Criteria

• Significant experience designing, developing, supporting and maintaining complex Java-based services and applications across both legacy and modern technology stacks in complex environments.
• Strong experience building APIs, microservices and integrated services using Java, REST, Spring Boot/Cloud, Redis, Hibernate, with experience of Kubernetes and Docker, messaging technologies such as JMS, Kafka or RabbitMQ, and cloud-native platforms including AWS, S3, EKS.
• Experience using modern CI/CD tooling (e.g. Java IDEs, Maven, Git, GitLab CI, Artifactory, Jenkins) and databases (incl. MySQL and Oracle,) with the ability to write and support SQL, PL/SQL, triggers and stored procedures.
• Strong experience leading full stack development in a team environment including; technical leadership through software engineering best practices (e.g. containerisation, microservice design patterns, Agile, TDD, CI/CD, code quality, maintainabi