Government Digital Service

Contents

• Location
• About the job
• Benefits
• Things you need to know
• Apply and further information

Bristol, London, Manchester

About the job

Job summary

GDS exists to help the government make brilliant public services that empower people in the UK. We work at the very centre of government to drive digital transformation, focused on users. We build and maintain platforms and services for others to use and create great public services that are accessible, inclusive and easy to use. We also work with government departments to identify patterns, share learning and create change to make government more efficient.

Our teams are organised around delivering on our priorities. These are:

• making it easier for people to find what they are looking for on GOV.UK
• building common platforms and services to make it simpler and cheaper to build quality digital services
• promoting agile, user-centred design practices both in the UK and across the world

We are recruiting Mid-level and Senior Developers for the GOV.UK Pay and GOV.UK Notify teams, which are both part of Products & Services at GDS. 

GOV.UK Pay lets service teams across the public sector take online and over the phone card payments from their users quickly and easily. It also helps them manage their income, issue refunds and run financial reports. It provides a simple, accessible and secure payment experience to millions of people. 

Since its launch over 8 years ago, GOV.UK Pay has processed over 97 million transactions for over 350 organisations, with a value of over £6 billion. The next few years are an opportunity for us to radically improve how the public sector handles payments.

Read more about GOV.UK Pay on the GDS blog.

GOV.UK Notify makes it easy for public sector service teams to send emails, text messages and letters.

Since its launch in 2016, use of GOV.UK Notify has grown exponentially. Today, more than 1,600 organisations and 9,000 services use it. We’ve sent over 9.7 billion notifications and continue to send millions more notifications every day.

Organisations that use GOV.UK Notify range from government departments to county councils, NHS trusts to GP surgeries, and fire services to ambulance trusts. It is used in a huge variety of ways, including medical appointments, updating people on their passport applications, two factor authentications, etc.

Job description

As a Developer or Senior Developer in Products & Services, you’ll:

• work as part of a multi-disciplinary agile team, collaborating with frontend developers, content designers, product managers and user researchers to ensure your code puts users first at all stages of development
• write clean, secure code following a test-driven approach
• implement tools to support development and continuous improvement of the systems you work on
• support the live operation of the services we run during office hours, answering support queries from users, monitoring error rates and responding to incidents
• participate in out-of-hours support rotas where necessary - you'll be paid an allowance, and a further hourly payment for any duties you perform when on call
• share your work and the things you’ve learned through blog posts and show and tells, with the option of presenting at conferences and meetups
• use your learning and development budget to develop your career

To learn more about what GOV.UK Pay developers do, read about a typical day on the Pay team. GOV.UK Pay uses NodeJS and Java to build our microservices. Our code is visible on Github.

GOV.UK Notify also codes in the open and you can take a look at our code on Github. We run Python Flask based web applications supported by several microservices written in Python. Read about how we migrated GOV.UK Notify to AWS Elastic Container Service and how we reliably send text messages to users. 

Both GOV.UK Pay and GOV.UK Notify use Concourse CI and Terraform to run build pipelines and manage infrastructure on AWS. We use AWS RDS (Postgres), AWS SQS, AWS ElastiCache, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana and everything in between. 

For frontend, we follow the GOV.UK Design System and use GOV.UK Frontend components and patterns.

Person specification

A Developer would be expected to: 

• have experience in back-end development, ideally with knowledge of web development in Python, NodeJS or Java
• have experience working with cloud based web applications, with technologies such as databases, caching, CDNs, containerisation and Unix-like operating systems
• have thorough understanding of software design principles, and an ability to apply them
• have proven experience of modern software development approaches such as automated testing, test driven development, continuous integration, pair programming, code review and version control
• have understanding of common web security risks such as OWASP Top 10, and the corresponding mitigations
• enjoy researching and learning new programming tools and techniques and sharing their skills with others
• have experience working in a collaborative environment, and an understanding of the benefits of agile and multi-disciplinary approaches
• have a desire to use their skills and experience to make a genuine difference, and to work on important services that are relied upon by millions of people

In addition to the above, Senior Developers would also:

• provide technical leadership within team, advising and working with developers to identify the best solutions
• take responsibility for solving complex issues, drawing upon a broad knowledge of web technologies
• take responsibility for developing others, through line management and/or mentoring
• help recruit other developers and, where appropriate, get involved with sifting and interviewing

If you meet a few of those criteria but think that you might not meet every last one then don’t let that stop you from submitting an application.

Benefits

The benefits of working at GDS

There are many benefits of working at GDS, including:

• flexible hybrid working with flexi-time and the option to work part-time or condensed hours
• a Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
• 25 days of annual leave, increasing by a day each year up to a maximum of 30 days
• an extra day off for The King’s birthday
• an in-year bonus scheme to recognise high performance
• career progression and coaching, including a training budget for personal development
• paid volunteering leave
• a focus on wellbeing with access to an employee assistance programme
• job satisfaction from making government services easier to use and more inclusive for people across the UK
• advances on pay, including for travel season tickets
• death in service benefits
• cycle to work scheme and facilities
• access to children's holiday play schemes across different locations in central London
• access to an employee discounts scheme
• 10 learning days per year
• volunteering opportunities (5 special leave days per year)
• access to a suite of learning activities through Civil Service learning

GDS offers hybrid working for all employees. This means that everyone does some working from home and also spends some time in their local office. You’ll agree to your hybrid working arrangement with your line manager in line with your preferences and business needs.

Any move to Government Digital Service from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk

The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : gds-recruitment@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk
• Email : gds-recruitment@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : gds-recruitment@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, you should contact gds-recruitment-complaints@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk in the first instance.

If you are not satisfied with the response you receive you can contact the Civil Service Commission by email: info@csc.gov.uk Or in writing: Civil Service Commission, Room G/8 1 Horse Guards Road, London, SW1A 2HQ.

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