Technical Lead
Department for Work and Pensions
Apply before 11:55 pm on Sunday 15th December 2024
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About the job
Job summary
Are you a Software Engineer or Technical Lead with experience of working with Product Owners and Delivery Managers to create cutting edge, innovative cloud-based solutions in a business-critical team?
If so, The Garage has an exciting opportunity for you!
To date, The Garage has developed and deployed over 75 solutions that have processed over 50 million transactions. Recognised as a government leader in intelligent automation, The Garage is also acknowledged as leading the way across industry.
As a deep technical specialist, you will regularly communicate with a range of technical resources, including Architects, Enterprise Infrastructure teams and Product Owners, to ensure alignment to standards and the delivery of customer-focused products that meet business needs throughout their life.
Job description
As a Technical Lead in The Garage, you will be accountable for the day-to-day product development and coordination of multiple technical teams to deliver and maintain products and services for DWP.
The Technical Lead will provide technical input into business discussions as required based on their deep technical experience in areas such as software development, site reliability engineering, DevOps, and solution architecture.
To deliver innovative, robust, secure, scalable and cost-effective automation products to be proud of, the Technical Lead will utilise a blend of the latest techniques and technologies such as event-driven architecture, microservice architecture, serverless computing, containerisation, robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, and optical character recognition.
To help you really make a difference, you’ll be using the best tools and equipment for the job. We plan and track work in Jira, we document in SharePoint, we communicate using Teams and Slack, we commit, build and deploy code with GitLab, we use best-in-class cloud services from Amazon Web Services (AWS), and we do it all on MacBook Pro devices.
To support you in your role, you’ll have access to some fantastic learning and development resources; conferences with industry expert speakers, comprehensive instructor-led training, and subscriptions to digital training solutions such as Cloud Academy. You will also have access to support through direct Slack channels with our partners such as AWS, UiPath and MongoDB for every day on the job learning. You will:
- Provide technical insight to wider DWP business discussions to contribute to the development of new products and/or the exploration of new technical solutions.
- Advising and assisting in the formulation of application development plans and guiding others on how they relate to the wider DWP strategy.
- Consult and co-operate with internal and external stakeholders where necessary to achieve mutually acceptable solutions.
- Acting on own authority to manage and provide direction to projects, maintaining information and analysis used to justify decisions.
- Providing definitive advice amongst diverse teams, negotiating, persuading and gaining consensuses and cooperation on contentious issues to drive development forward.
- Ensure product development is aligned with and delivers wider DWP technical strategy.
- Work closely with delivery teams to ensure alignment to DWP standards and best practice for all product development and support.
- Work with production, security and infrastructure teams to ensure highly resilient, secure, scalable and available products.
Person specification
When giving details in your employment history and personal statement you should highlight your experience in line with essential criteria below:
- Lead criterion - Experience of creating cloud-based solutions using JavaScript/TypeScript, Node.js, SQL, Docker. *
- Experience of communicating effectively with stakeholders at multiple levels within an organisation.
- Experience of leading multiple agile teams delivering a diverse range of projects.
- Experience of building and maintaining infrastructure-as-code.
- Experience of building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.
- Awareness of open-source AI/ML models and how to utilise them in cloud-based solutions.
Your application, and what is required from each section is listed in the Selection Process Details.
*An initial sift may be conducted using the lead criterion stated above. Candidates who pass the initial sift will progress to a full sift.
If you would like to learn more about the role, please contact richard.hanley@dwp.gov.uk.
Benefits
We also have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:
- Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
- Generous annual leave – at least 23 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (pro–rata for part time employees), plus 9 days public and privilege leave.
- Support for financial wellbeing, including interest-free season ticket loans for travel, a cycle to work scheme and an employee discount scheme.
- Health and wellbeing support including our Employee Assistance Programme for specialist advice and counselling and the opportunity to join HASSRA a first-class programme of competitions, activities and benefits for its members (subscription payable monthly).
- Family friendly policies including enhanced maternity and shared parental leave pay after 1 year’s continuous service.
- Funded learning and development to support progress in your role and career. This includes industry recognised qualifications and accreditations, coaching, mentoring and talent development programmes.
- An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join professional and interpersonal networks including Women’s Network, National Race Network, National Disability Network (THRIVE) and many more.
This job role may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in their DWP office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and your office will be your contractual place of work. The number of days that anyone will be able to work at home will be determined primarily by business need but personal circumstances and other relevant circumstances will also be taken into account. If you are successful, any opportunities for hybrid working, including whether a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for you, will be discussed with you prior to you taking up your post.
Salary Information
Pay for this role is from £55,557 to £78,517.
The maximum salary for the grade is £66,058, however a Digital Allowance of up to £12,459 per annum is available for exceptional candidates. Digital Allowance is non-salary, and non-pensionable, and is classed as a temporary allowance. It is reviewed annually where it could be retained, amended, or removed.
Our offer to successful candidates will be based on an assessment of your skills and experience as demonstrated at interview.
Existing Civil Servants who secure a new role on lateral transfer should maintain their current salary.
Existing Civil Servants who gain promotion may move to the bottom of the grade pay scale or 10% increase in salary whichever would be the greater.
Things you need to know
Selection process details
Stage 1: Application
As part of the application process your application will consist of three parts:
- A Personal Details application form.
- Employment history- this should contain your work experience and any skills, qualifications, and accomplishments relevant to the jobs you have completed, based on the essential criteria.
- Personal statement- up to 1000 words. This statement should be used to provide examples of how you meet the essential criteria listed in the Person specification.
Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
The sift panel will use the information in your employment history and personal statement to assess your experience, skills and knowledge against the essential criteria.
You will be provided with one combined overall assessment score for both your CV and Personal Statement.
Applications will be sifted at regular intervals from the date the posts are advertised. Please apply as soon as you can, do not wait until the end of the campaign.
Important Information
- You will be asked to complete your employment history any information that you would customarily share on a CV should therefore be entered onto the application form.
- Personal details that could be used to identify you including your name, contact details and address must be removed for your application to be considered
- If your employment history/personal statement contains any personal details your application will be withdrawn.
Sift and interview dates to be confirmed.
Stage 2: Interview
If you’re successful at sift stage you will be invited to a video interview via Microsoft Teams. There, you will be assessed against the experiences listed in the essential criteria.
You will be asked to do a 5-minute presentation on a specific topic. The use of visual aids such of PowerPoint is optional. Further details will be provided to candidates invited to interview.
Interviews will take place from mid January 2025.
Further information
Find out more about Working for DWP
For Hints and Tips on completing your application visit Applying for jobs at DWP Digital.
A reserve list may be held for a period of 3 months from which further appointments can be made.
Reserve list candidates will be posted in merit order by location.
The Civil Service values honesty and integrity and expects all candidates to abide by these principles. Please ensure that all examples provided in your application are taken directly from your own experience and that you describe the examples in your own words. Applications will be screened and if evidence of plagiarism or copying examples/answers from other sources is found, your application will be withdrawn. Internal DWP candidates may also face disciplinary action
Reasonable Adjustment
At DWP we value diversity and inclusion and actively encourage and welcome applications from everyone, including those that are underrepresented in our workforce.
We consider visible and non-visible disabilities, neurodiversity or learning differences, chronic medical conditions, or mental ill health. Examples include dyslexia, epilepsy, autism, chronic fatigue, or schizophrenia.
If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should: Contact Government Recruitment Service via DigitalRecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.
Complete the “Reasonable Adjustments” section in the “Additional requirements” page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you’re deaf, a Language Service Professional.
For further information on reasonable adjustments, terms and conditions and how we recruit visit the How We Recruit, page
For further information on National Security Vetting please visit the following page https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/demystifying-vetting
Security Clearance Requirement
You must meet the security requirements before you can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check.
For meaningful checks to be carried out, you will need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time, to enable appropriate checks to be carried out and produce a result which provides the required level of assurance. Whilst a lack of UK residency in itself is not necessarily a bar to a security clearance, and expectation of UK residency may range from 3 to 5 years. Failure to meet the residency requirements needed for the role may result in the withdrawal of provisional jobs offers.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
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Working for the Civil Service
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
Diversity and Inclusion
Apply and further information
Contact point for applicants
Job contact :
- Name : Richard Hanley
- Email : richard.hanley@dwp.gov.uk
Recruitment team
- Email : digitialrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk