Principal Developer
| Posting date: | 19 May 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £73,900 to £85,690 per year |
| Additional salary information: | London: £77,900 - £85,690, National: £73,900 - £81,290. You may be eligible for an additional non-pensionable allowance, pending a Capability and Skills Assessment, with a value of up to £21,700. New entrants to the Civil Service will start their role o |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 01 June 2025 |
| Location: | Manchester |
| Company: | Government Recruitment Service |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 406171/2 |
Summary
The Home Office Automation and Innovation portfolio delivers the government's commitment to "set the standard for excellence in the AI age" - harnessing cutting-edge technology to revolutionise public service delivery. As outlined in the Government's Generative AI Framework, we're in "a period of rapid and exciting technological changes, which offers huge potential", and we're turning that potential into reality.
Our work spans Home Office mission-critical operations, such as transforming Border Security and immigration processes, to revolutionising asylum case management and enhancing Counter-Terrorism capabilities. Imagine developing technology that helps reunite families, creates safer communities, protects vulnerable people, and ensures smoother journeys for the millions travelling to and from the UK.
Each area presents unique challenges where AI and automation can deliver substantial efficiency savings, and improve outcomes for the public and colleagues.
The Principal Developer will be the lead technical specialist for the Automation Centre and all its deliveries spanning low-code, code and AI.
You will oversee our technical standards, leading in many aspects including our engineering roadmap, technical debt, assessing technical designs and acting as a senior escalation point for all engineering issues.
You may be called upon to take part in planning with senior stakeholders to make sure that technical designs match strategy. In this you will be expected to help ensure that all engineers, architects and other professions are working together. You will also identify, test and advocate for new tools or approaches.
You will support the assurance of our solutions and help resolve any discrepancy between approach and organisational strategy.
As a Principal Developer, you will be expected to mentor other senior engineers in technical tasks, as well as support recruitment and assessment activities.
Tools and Technologies we use:
We are keen for Engineers to continue learning new technologies, we have a large range in the Home Office including:
- Backend: Java, Node.js, C#, Python, PHP, Scala, Power Platform
- Frontend: React, JavaScript, Typescript, Angular
- Data: PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Mongodb, Apache Cassandra
- DevOps/Platforms: Azure, AWS, Kubernetes, Azure Dev Ops, Jenkins, Docker, Ansible, Terraform
- AI: Azure ML Studio, Python, Github Copilot, OpenAI
What you will do
Your main day to day responsibilities will be:
- Technical oversight and support for the team to ensure they deliver secure, reliable, scalable applications which include case management systems, AI/ML projects and serverless functions.
- Working with architects/security and other stakeholders evaluating and advising on design choices and ensuring that they are high quality and balance technical and business considerations.
- Defining and documenting best practices working with Principal Developers across our shared engineering function.
- Working with all professions to ensure support and maintenance of our live deliveries.
- Being the technical authority in your area, providing arbitration for complex technical decisions
- Carrying out challenging implementation tasks, whilst maintaining strong stakeholder engagement and keeping the relevant documentation up to date
- Pioneering new software architectural and build/integration approaches, ensuring they adhere to organisational strategy.
- Ensuring a DevOps culture is embraced across engineering.
Like many organisations we need to maintain our services 24/7, therefore, on occasions there may be a requirement to work out of hours, for which you will be paid an additional allowance.
Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme