Lead Software Developer

Are you a curious, adaptable and experienced Scrum Team Lead and Java developer, committed to continuous learning?, As a Lead Developer, you’ll manage and develop a Scrum team of around eight developers of varying experience levels. Working in a multidisciplinary agile team, you’ll provide technical leadership, coaching and mentoring, helping your team deliver high-quality services that sit at the heart of our organisation.

As a Lead Developer, you will:

• Provide technical leadership to your team
• Coach and support your team to upskill their technical capabilities and ensure they design and deliver efficient and maintainable solutions
• Advocate and lead the adoption of developer AI tooling within your team
• Take technical ownership of release increments for services your team is responsible for
• Communicate between the product owners and developers to ensure key deliverables are achieved and understood by both parties
• Work with the wider developer community to define and document technical standards
• Work to ensure your services are up to date by resolving security vulnerabilities according to our security policy
• Help and encourage your team to maximise their automated test coverage
• Work closely with the Architects for design and the Platform team who manage our development pipeline using Concourse CI SonarQube, AWS, Terraform and Artifactory. We use Docker containers and AWS ECS
• Take the lead in sharing your knowledge and experience within our software development and lead software developer communities

We actively invest in learning, innovation and professional development. Developers are given dedicated time to explore new ideas, develop their skills and keep pace with industry trends. You’ll have access to online learning, instructor-led training, conferences (subject to budget), and a thriving developer community of practice., * We are currently using a hybrid approach to the way we work which provides opportunities for you to be adaptable in the way you work so that you can achieve a healthy balance between your work and home life. The degree of choice you have will depend on your role and your day-to-day work activities.

• Your manager will agree regular patterns of attendance with you; however, you may be required to make yourself available to attend the office more frequently when required to meet business needs.
• A hybrid employment contract will be provided as the standard offering. However, remote contracts may be considered as an exception whereby commuting to our Cardiff or Edinburgh office location is not reasonably practicable., We’re committed to being diverse and inclusive, so please make your application anonymous by removing all identifying personal information (such as your name and age) from your personal statement.

Once the advert has closed, we will sift applications - this involves reading through them all, please bear with us as this can take some time.

We may raise the score required if we receive a high number of applications.

At sift we may choose to take through the highest performing candidates to the next stage. If, after the final stage is completed and roles are unfilled, we will proceed to invite lower scoring candidates to interview.

Stage 2 - Interview

Companies House uses a blended interview technique, allowing us to find out more about you. We use the Success Profile framework and at interview we will use Success Profiles assessing the Behaviours and Technical Skills listed in the advert, and Strengths.

Successful candidates from the sift stage will be invited to a virtual interview, which will be conducted using Microsoft Teams.

As part of the interview, you will be asked to complete a coding exercise. Details will be emailed to you 1 hour before your interview start time. You’ll have 1 hour to work through the activity and then you’ll join the Teams call at your interview start time. You’ll be asked to screen share, discussing the exercise with the panel and answering some live questions to demonstrate your level of skill. This will be assessing Technical Skill: Programming and build.

The lead criteria to distinguish between tied candidates will be: Leadership.

A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made for the same or similar roles.

If after the interview you are not found appointable at the advertised grade, you may be offered the lower grade role of Senior Software Developer, if you are considered to meet the skills, experience and behaviours for the lower level. The benchmark for appointing to the lower grade is set at the start of each campaign.

All offers will be made in merit order.

Our recruitment process is underpinned by the principle of recruitment based on fair and open competition with decisions made on the basis of merit, as outlined in the Civil Service Commissioners’ Recruitment Principles., * 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

We’re looking for the following experience and technical capabilities, which will be assessed at sift and at interview.

• Excellent coding skills which must include demonstrable experience of Java and Spring Boot for Enterprise or microservice architectures
• Experience of leading a scrum team.
• Strong communication skills where you can translate technical jargon into simple, clear descriptions so understanding is achieved.
• Experience of using agile techniques/methodologies.
• Understanding of full stack web technologies,
• Practical knowledge of SQL and NoSQL databases,
• Application of industry standard software development working practices such as test-driven and behaviour-driven development (TDD/BDD), pair programming, version control and branching strategies,
• Continuous Integration/Continuous Development,
• Application of software design patterns.
• Knowledge and understanding of developing and running applications securely in Cloud environments.
• AWS/Docker/Terraform.
• Knowledge of industry standard security practices.
• If you have knowledge of Typescript / Express / Node that will be considered a bonus., * Leadership
• Changing and Improving
• Developing Self and Others
• Delivering at Pace

Technical skills

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

• REST Interfaces
• Web
• Security
• Containers
• Programming and Build, * Excellent coding skills which must include demonstrable experience of Java and Spring Boot for Enterprise or microservice architectures
• Experience of leading a scrum team.
• Strong communication skills where you can translate technical jargon into simple, clear descriptions so understanding is achieved.

We’d encourage you to use the full word count, and to give us clear examples and evidence of the different elements of the essential minimum criteria., Successful candidates must undergo a basic (or equivalent) criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check .

Pulled from the full job description

• Pay rise
• Annual leave
• Company pension, £42,923 - £58,044 Base salary is £42,923 - £47,044 per year with an additional DDaT allowance of £4,350 - £11,000 per year available. The final salary and allowance awarded will be based on an assessment of your skills and experience as demonstrated at interview. All our roles come with an excellent benefits’ package, including the generous Civil Service Pension Scheme. Further salary increases depend entirely upon the outcome of our annual pay negotiation with central government. If you are a current Civil Servant transferring to us, your salary will be discussed in line with our pay policies. A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97% GBP, Alongside your salary of £42,923, Companies House contributes £12,434 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides .

We believe that our success is driven by the well-being and satisfaction of our team members at all levels of the organisation. At Companies House we’re committed to providing a comprehensive benefits package that goes beyond the ordinary, ensuring your career journey with us is not only fulfilling, but also rewarding. We pride ourselves on offering a quality work-life balance with our employee wellbeing being central to our working practices.

If you are looking for a place where you can focus on your own development as well as support others to succeed and perform at their best, then this is the role for you.

We’re looking for talented Lead Software Developers to join Companies House and play a key role in transforming corporate governance through the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act. Our modern digital services are built primarily using Java with Spring Boot and TypeScript with Node.js and Express, alongside the GOV.UK Design System. We’re also modernising a number of legacy applications as part of an ambitious transformation programme. We are currently looking for expert developers in Java using the Spring Boot framework. We like to hire inquisitive developers who value continuous learning, and we will support you in learning all the development technologies we use at Companies House. As a Lead Developer, over time you will be expected to be familiar with all the technologies in use at Companies House, including multiple languages and frameworks (Typescript, Node, Express, Go and others).

Watch this video to find out more about working in Digital at Companies House

Companies House offers a flexible and welcoming culture that promotes a healthy work life balance as well as a proactive approach to wellbeing that allows us to be our best at work. We recognise that people are the key to our success so offer a fantastic benefits package including flexible working with no core hours, 30 days annual leave, 8 bank holidays and 1 privilege day as well as enrolment into the Civil Service Pension scheme with a contribution rate averaging 28%.

Find out more about what a great place Companies House is to work

Please note:

• Companies House cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign., Head to Our benefits - Working for us - Recruitment (companieshouse.gov.uk) to find out more about the fantastic benefits package we have at Companies House.

We celebrate diversity…

As an equal opportunity employer, we celebrate diversity, being committed to ensuring we’re representative of the citizens we serve and creating an inclusive environment. Everyone in Companies House brings something different, and so will you. To fulfil our commitment to recruiting and attracting diverse talent we welcome applications from underrepresented groups. We also welcome applications from Welsh speakers.

We are proud to be a disability confident leader. Our recruitment process is fully inclusive and we can make adjustments as needed through our process. These could include having an interview buddy, extra time at interviews/assessments and receiving interview questions in advance, to name a few.