Software Developer

Location: National*

Closing Date: 23rd October

Interviews: (subject to change) after the 6th of November

Grade: SEO

(MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer)

Salary (for more information, please refer to the T&Cs on the bottom):

London: £45,824 - £56,050 (which may include an allowance of up to £10,226)

National: £39,868 - £51,675 (which may include an allowance of up to £11,807)

Working pattern: Full-time, part-time, flexible working

Contract Type: Perm

Vacancy number: 91266

*We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your local office. Office locations can be found ON THIS MAP

The Role

We’re recruiting for Software Developers here at Justice Digital, to be part of one of our warm and collaborative teams. 

This role aligns against the Software Developer role from the Government Digital and Data Framework

You’ll be working with other developers on our tech stack and will have lots of opportunities to learn new technologies and systems. We use a variety of different technologies, and will work with you to place you in a team that matches your skills, interests and aspirations wherever possible.

As an example, you could be:

• Reducing reoffending rates by improving the scheduling of prison visits in our Prisons team
• Enhancing access to justice by developing a service to apply for legal aid in the Legal Aid Agency
• Building a no-code platform for publishing government forms and services to the internet in the MoJ Forms team
• Improving outcomes for offenders by building tools to manage rehabilitation services in our Probation team
• Maintaining transparency of government by managing freedom of information requests and parliamentary questions in our Central team

You will work with user researchers, product managers, designers, delivery managers, technical architects and content specialists who share a vision for improving government through smarter use of technology.

To help picture your life at MoJ Justice Digital please take a look at our blog and our Digital and Technology strategy 2025

Our Tech Stack

We rely on Kotlin or TypeScript to write our application code, Circle CI or GitHub Actions for CI/CD, Sentry for application monitoring, Kubernetes and Docker to schedule and run our services (read about our Cloud Platform), AWS for most of our infrastructure, GOV.UK Design System for our web interfaces and use Macbook Pros.

For front-end development, we value a robust understanding of the underlying web technologies. We value well-maintained, open-source tools that can be used to produce semantic HTML, performant CSS and unobtrusive JavaScript or TypeScript, and we assess all our services against accessibility criteria.

We’re happy to help you learn our tech stack once you’re part of our team, and do not require a match in your experience of languages. Check out GitHub for a closer look at the technologies we use, and a complete list of services that we build and maintain. We subscribe to the manifesto for agile software development.

Our Community

We currently have over 150+ developers who make up the engineering community across the MoJ. You will be encouraged to play an active role in the engineering community and culture, and take part in informal support networks with your peers.

We take the responsibility of supportive and effective line management very seriously. We will value the skills you bring to the civil service and help you to build on them. When the time is right we will support moving between teams or government departments to learn different technologies, or take on more responsibility, according to your career goals.

Take a look at our developer blog and Justice Digital blog to get a sense of our work and culture.

Key Responsibilities

As a Software Developer at the MoJ you will have technical and people responsibilities.

Technical:

• Helping to design, build and maintain APIs, services and systems
• Working on pre-existing codebases 
• Improving the resilience and stability of software

People:

• Supporting senior developers in building high-performing teams
• Help to build and maintain a diverse, inclusive culture across the development community, growing awareness, inclusivity, and balance

If this feels like an exciting challenge, something you are enthusiastic about, and want to join our team please read on and apply!

Benefits

• 37 hours per week and flexible working options including working from home, working part-time, job sharing, or working compressed hours
• A £1k per person learning budget is in place to support all our people, with access to best in class conferences and seminars, accreditation with professional bodies, fully funded vocational programmes and e-learning platforms 
• Staff have 10% time to dedicate to develop & grow
• Generous civil service pension based on defined benefit scheme, with employer contributions of 28.97% from April 1st 2024 (Contribution Rates)
• 25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the Kings’ birthday. 5 additional days of leave once you have reached 5 years of service
• Compassionate maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave policies, with up to 26 weeks leave at full pay, 13 weeks with partial pay, and 13 weeks further leave. And maternity support/paternity leave at full pay for 2 weeks, too!
• Wellbeing support including access to the Calm app. 
• Bike loans up to £2500 and secure bike parking (subject to availability and location)
• Season ticket loans, childcare vouchers and eye-care vouchers.
• 5 days volunteering paid leave
• Free membership to BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT
• Some offices may have a subsidised onsite Gym

Person Specification

You may be great for this role if you:

• Have experience of building server-side applications and detailed knowledge of at least one programming language
• Champion software maintenance, clean code and practices that make change easy
• Care about making usable experiences, with a good understanding of front-end development concerns  
• Use unix-like operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS X and Git
• Have working knowledge of relational databases
• Thrive when you work as part of a team that abides by the spirit of the manifesto of agile software development
• Enjoy learning and helping others
• Hold yourself and others to a high standard
• Solve problems in a systematic way

You’ll value:

• Continuous learning and development
• Being inclusive, supportive, inquisitive and responsible (MoJ D&T core values)
• Working with integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality (Civil Service core values)

Willingness to be assessed against the requirements for BPSS clearance.

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.

How to Apply

Candidates must submit a CV and an optional Statement of Suitability (Up to 750 words), which details how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above.

In Justice Digital, we recruit using a combination of the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process:

• Working Together 
• Developing Self and Others 
• Making Effective Decisions 

A diverse panel will review your application against the Person Specification above. 

Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on recent experience in an engineering role will be conducted prior to the sift.

Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a 1-hour panel interview held via video conference. A small technical exercise will be shared in advance and will be presented during the interview.

Should you be unsuccessful in the role that you have applied for but demonstrate the capability for a role at a lower level, we reserve the right to discuss this opportunity with you and offer you the position without needing a further application.

A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months, from which further appointments may be made.

Terms & Conditions

Please review our Terms & Conditions which set out how we recruit and provide further information related to the role and salary arrangements.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact recruitment@digital.justice.gov.uk