Principal Developer
| Posting date: | 04 September 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £73,900 to £81,290 per year |
| Additional salary information: | 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 on the pay range minimum. |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 18 September 2025 |
| Location: | Manchester |
| Company: | Government Recruitment Service |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 425480/1 |
Summary
Our work spans Home Office mission-critical operations, such as enhancing Counter-Terrorism capabilities, 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.
The Principal Developer works on challenging technical problems, which require broad thinking while remaining hands-on developing software. You will be expected to actively deliver but will have more of a focus on ensuring delivery quality and overall service value.
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, Spring, Spring Boot, Node.js, Python
- Frontend: React, JavaScript, Vue
- Data: PostgreSQL, Oracle, Mongodb, Apache Cassandra
- DevOps/Platforms: Azure, AWS, Kubernetes, Azure
- DevOps, Jenkins, Docker, Ansible, Terraform
What you will do
Your main day to day responsibilities will be:
- Carrying out challenging implementation tasks, whilst maintaining strong stakeholder engagement and keeping the relevant documentation up to date.
- Delivering new designs and implementations, working with architects/security and other stakeholders.
- Pioneering new software architectural and build/integration approaches, ensuring they adhere to organisational strategy.
- Implementing effective test and QA across a number of individuals/systems.
- Being the technical authority in your area, providing arbitration for complex technical decisions.
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.
UK residency and security requirements - You need to have lived in the UK for the past 5 years. (This role requires both SC and NPPV3 security clearance)
Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme