Head of Software Engineering

We are seeking a highly experienced and inspiring Head of Software Engineering to lead our technical capability and drive the design, development, and operation of modern digital services. This role is central to the department's mission, requiring a leader who can blend exceptional technical expertise with a commitment to service led model and public value., The Head of Software Engineering will provide strategic leadership and professional direction to our engineering community. You will be responsible for defining the technical standards, architectural principles, and engineering culture required to deliver world-class digital services. You will move the department away from legacy "point solutions" toward a unified, API-first, and cloud-native digital estate, ensuring our services are secure, scalable, and meet the GDS Service Standard., 1. Technical Leadership & Strategy (Driving Excellence)

• Engineering Strategy and Standards: Co-Define with Strategy and Architecture team and champion the long-term technical vision and technology strategy for the department’s services and platforms, ensuring alignment with central government technology policies (e.g., cloud-first, open standards).
• Work with Heads of (Architecture, Delivery, Testing, Product) to implement the digital strategy using best practices
• Establish and enforce best practices in CI/CD, SRE, TDD, and secure coding (OWASP).
• Modernisation: Drive the roadmap for retiring legacy systems (e.g., migration of legacy portals to an Integrated Procurement Platform) while managing technical debt.
• Open Standards: Ensure all software is "Open by Default," promoting re-use across the Civil Service and alignment with the Technology Code of Practice.
• Be the ultimate owner of engineering quality, setting robust standards for clean code, test-driven development (TDD), CI/CD, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices across all engineering teams.
• Lead the development and modernisation of complex, large-scale systems, including integrating with legacy government systems
• Ensure all software development meets the high standards of the Government Service Manual and passes all relevant Digital Service Assessments (Alpha, Beta, Live).

2. People & Capability Leadership (Growing Talent)

• Build the Community: Act as the "Head of Profession" for software engineering, fostering a culture of continuous learning, psychological safety, and radical collaboration.
• Capability Building: Lead recruitment, retention, and career development strategies. Define the "Definition of Done" and engineering excellence standards across all multidisciplinary teams. Establish and evolve the department’s DDaT (Digital, Data and Technology) Engineering Capability, defining clear career pathways, skills matrices, and professional development plans (including coaching and recruitment).
• Mentorship: Coach Lead Developers and Senior Engineers, helping them grow into strategic technical leaders.
• Line management and Activity management: Manage the development team of perm staff and Manage a balanced mix of civil service and third party resources, ensuring knowledge transfer, transition planning is built in technical delivery plans and building a sustainable in-house technical team.

3. Delivery, Governance & Stakeholder Management (Delivering Public Value)

• Agile at Scale: Partner with Delivery Managers and Product Managers to ensure engineering capacity is aligned with the departmental roadmap (Now-Next-Later).
• Assurance: Lead technical assessments and peer reviews to ensure services meet WCAG 2.2 accessibility standards and high-performance benchmarks.
• SRE & Operations: Oversee the transition from "Build" to "Run," championing Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and DevOps mindsets to ensure 24/7 service availability.
• Represent the engineering function to senior internal and cross-government stakeholders, clearly articulating technical debt, risk, investment cases, and strategic decisions in non-technical terms.
• Promote a culture of working in the open and sharing reusable components and best practices with the wider Civil Service DDaT community., CCS operates a smarter working model that balances flexibility with collaboration. Successful candidates are expected to spend at least 26 days per quarter (approximately 2 days per week, pro-rata) at their contracted office, another CCS site, or off-site for meetings. For the remainder of the time, you may work from home or another suitable location that meets business needs., * UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Do you have experience in Test-driven development?, * Technical Depth: Proven experience in a senior engineering role (e.g., Head of Engineering, Lead Developer or Architect) building large-scale, distributed systems using modern languages (e.g., Java, Python, Node.js) and cloud infrastructure (AWS/Azure/Google) in UK Civil service or similar public sector environment.

• Leadership: Experience managing "managers of managers" and leading large (20+ person) multidisciplinary engineering functions.
• Strategic Vision: Ability to translate complex policy requirements into sustainable technical roadmaps.
• Stakeholder Influence: Experience in communicating technical risks and trade-offs to non-technical senior leaders (Directors and Ministers).
• Modern Practices: Deep expertise in DevOps, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and building "Security-In" rather than "Security-On.", * Leadership
• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing
• Delivering at Pace

Technical skills

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

• Modern development standards
• Development process optimisation
• User Focus, Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is counter-terrorist check .

Alongside your salary of £72,771, Crown Commercial Service contributes £21,081 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

What we will offer you, here are some of the benefits you can expect:

• Competitive salary
• Generous pension scheme
• A discretionary non-contractual performance related bonus
• Working remotely in addition to working in advertised office location
• Flexi time scheme (available for B1-B6) - Remove this bullet for SCS roles
• Minimum 25 days annual leave to a maximum service related 30 days excluding bank holidays

Explore fully how we will reward your work.

Want to make a difference? Find out more about the rewarding work that we do in our candidate pack.

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service D&I Strategy.