Senior Developer

We are the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG), working on initiatives that significantly impact people's lives. Our Digital Planning Programme aims to revolutionize England's planning system, making it faster, more accessible, and data-driven.

As a Senior Software Developer in the Digital Planning Programme, you will be a technical leader responsible for designing, building, and maintaining high-quality digital services. You will guide others in writing clean, secure, and efficient code and communicate effectively with product managers, designers, and delivery colleagues.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Leading the design, development, and maintenance of robust, scalable, and open data services
• Providing strategic technical leadership by setting software architecture and engineering practices
• Defining and evolving scalable, secure design patterns and coding standards
• Collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to select technologies and deliver resilient digital services
• Shaping how planning data is modelled, shared, and integrated across local and central government
• Engaging directly with planning authorities, digital providers, and GDS to deliver user-centred services
• Collaborating closely with policy, delivery, and data teams to align technical delivery with programme goals
• Managing and mentoring a small team of developers and providing technical assurance across software workstreams
• Representing the department at technical forums, open-source communities, and government working groups

To be considered, you will need:

• Significant experience in software engineering, including leading the development of production-level web services, APIs, and message queue-based task processing
• Strong coding ability in multiple modern languages, e.g., Python, JavaScript
• Experience working with git as a version control system
• Experience of developing containerised applications and working with DevOps to deploy applications in the cloud
• Experience designing and implementing data models and services in distributed systems
• Ability to engage with non-technical stakeholders and explain complex technical concepts clearly
• Experience mentoring technical staff and leading delivery across multi-disciplinary teams

Desirable skills and experience include:

• Experience working in or with local government or the planning system
• Understanding of geospatial data standards, open data licensing, and identifiers
• Familiarity with government digital delivery, including GDS service assessments and open-source principles
• Knowledge of user-centred design and accessibility in government digital services
• Backend development experience in Node.js and Python
• Experience developing applications using the GDS design system
• Experience working on applications deployed into AWS

In terms of benefits, alongside your salary of £64,811-£70,677, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government contributes £18,775 towards your membership in the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Other benefits include tailored career pathways, flexible working, MyLifestyle Childcare Voucher, and Cycle to Work Schemes.