Closing date: Monday 6th December

Want to work on complex, large scale services for millions of people across the world?

Want the opportunity to have a positive impact and work on stuff that really matters?

If you've ticked both those boxes then this is definitely an opportunity you should apply to!

As a Principal Developer, you'll be passionate about building software that solves problems. We’re home to some of the most important public services in the United Kingdom and you'll drive the technical delivery, providing technical leadership so we can continue to build, improve, and maintain important digital services relied upon by the UK public and government.

You’ll ensure high-quality code is delivered in line with project goals and delivery cycles and you’ll thrive using agile methods.

Your key areas of impact will be:

• leading and advising on design choices and ensuring that software is high quality and balances technical and business considerations


• providing support and direction across multiple teams through deep technical insight, to balance new and live services


• improving our continuous deployment pipelines - helping us to identify and remove bottlenecks and increase the speed at which we can get features into the hands of our users


• working with teams to identify areas for improvement, coaching and mentoring team members


• pioneering new approaches, defining and sharing best practices across teams

What you'll need to be successful

We are looking for people with deep technical expertise. All our principal developers have a responsibility for supporting delivery and developing the staff around them. You’ll have outstanding technical knowledge that allows you to provide support and direction across a number of teams.

You’ll either specialise in Frontend or Backend development

If you’re a backend developer, you’ll be expected to have substantial knowledge of:

• Java, Spring or NodeJS, SQL and no SQL databases

If you’re a frontend developer, you’ll be expected to have substantial knowledge of:

• JavaScript, React, HTML, CSS and NodeJS as a server for web applications

Alongside this all our Principal Developers will have experience in:

• improving continuous delivery/continuous deployment environments where code is released to production multiple times per day


• leading on test driven development, using testing to validate solutions and promoting a culture of test-driven development


• agile development methodologies, including writing and taking ownership of stories


• secure development practices


• a cloud-based approach, selecting cloud components and defining infrastructure as code to integrate them (AWS, Azure, Docker and Kubernetes)

Some of the benefits our engineers love

• 35 days leave including public holidays, rising further withservice


• flexible working options to enable you to achieve the work life balance that right for you including part-time, flexi time and job sharing


• civil service pension with an average employer contribution of about 27%


• training and development opportunities


• interest free season ticketloan


• an in-year bonusscheme


• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity