Senior Software Developer, HEO, Perm, Liverpool, Newport

Job summary

In this role, you will be part of one of our technical teams that sit within the Digital Practice team within the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) directorate.

You will be responsible for developing software to meet user needs following best practice guidelines and helping to improve those guidelines. You will be able to write clean. secure and well-tested code following clear peer review processes within an agile or waterfall framework depending on the needs of the project. You will support colleagues as part of a collaborative DDaT directorate as well as operating as a partner to the wider Charity Commission to support the achievement of the shared goals, objectives and delivering a successful Commission strategy.

You will have the ability to coach and mentor junior colleagues and help build the capability of the team. You will also be able to operate and maintain Charity Commission systems, identifying issues in production while meeting the Government Service Standard and the Technology Code of Practice.

Job description

Key Responsibilities:

Availability and capacity management - Ensuring services are available with as little downtime or disruption as possible, and that we have sufficient resources to support emerging business needs. You will, manage service components to ensure they meet business needs and key performance indicators (KPIs)

Development process optimisation - Ensuring your processes are accurately defined and capture the most efficient way to complete a task by monitoring modified procedures. You will:

• Explain the importance of developing process efficiency and the common ways in which processes are optimised.
• Support specific activities to improve development processes.
• Identify obvious deficiencies

Information security - Maintaining the security, confidentiality and integrity of information. You will, design solutions and services with security controls included, specifically engineered to mitigate security threats.

Modern development standards - Using the latest technologies and best practices to improve the quality of the software development process. You will, apply modern development standards and support others in applying them

Programming and build (software engineering) – Collaborate with others when necessary to review specifications use the agreed specifications to design, code, test and document programs or scripts of medium-to-high complexity, using the right standards and tools

Prototyping - Exploring, testing and sharing different concepts before committing to the final design. You will approach prototyping as a team activity, actively soliciting prototypes and testing with others. Establish design patterns and iterate them by using a variety of prototyping methods and choose the most appropriate

Service support - Fixing service faults and maintaining the underlying infrastructure, ensuring processes are in place to keep the service running efficiently. You will, help fix service faults following agreed procedures carry out maintenance tasks on service support infrastructure

Systems design - Creating the specification and design of systems to meet defined business needs. You will, translate logical designs into physical designs

• produce detailed designs
• effectively document all work using required standards, methods and tools, including prototyping tools where appropriate
• design systems characterised by managed levels of risk, manageable business and technical complexity, and meaningful impact
• work with well understood technology and identify appropriate patterns

Systems integration - Identifying points of connection between different systems and processes, or opportunities to combine them, and designing how the components communicate.

• build and test simple interfaces between systems
• work on more complex integration as part of a wider team

User focus - Understanding the user needs to develop a detailed understanding of the problems that need to be solved. You will, collaborate with user researchers and can represent users internally

• explain the difference between user needs and the desires of the user
• champion user research to focus on all users
• prioritise and define approaches to understand the user story, guiding others in doing so, offer recommendations on the best tools and methods to use

Person specification

Essential Criteria

Ability:

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to troubleshoot complex deployment issues.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams (developers, QA, operations).
• Capacity to work in agile environments, adapting to changing priorities.
• Ability to document processes and communicate technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong focus on automation, efficiency, and continuous improvement.

Experience:

• Hands-on experience with Azure DevOps for build and release management.
• Demonstrated experience in Java and Java Spring application development and deployment.
• Experience working with Liferay DXP for enterprise portal solutions.
• Practical experience with Docker for containerization and orchestration.
• Familiarity with GitHub for source control and collaborative development.
• Exposure to automated testing frameworks and integration into CI/CD pipelines.
• Previous experience in cloud environments (preferably Azure) and infrastructure as code.

Ability:

Proficiency in:

• Java and Java Spring Framework.
• Docker for containerization.
• GitHub for version control and workflow automation.

Knowledge of:

• Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform, ARM templates).
• Monitoring and logging tools (e.g., Prometheus, ELK stack).
• Linux-based environments and shell scripting.
• GDS Service Design Standards

Understanding of:

• Security best practices for design and development of digital services.

Relevant professional qualifications such as BSc or BEng in Computer Science or equivalent experience in (Java, .Net, C#, C+)

Qualifications

Relevant professional qualifications such as BSc or BEng in Computer Science or equivalent experience in (Java, .Net, C#, C+)

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Changing and Improving
• Working Together
• Delivering at Pace

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £35,384, Charity Commission contributes £10,250 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

This is your chance to make a contribution that really matters and to make an impact in an organisation where your voice will be heard and your hard work noticed.

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