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Are you an accomplished software engineer looking for a role where you can make a real impact, using your technical experience to enable us to deliver our Statistics for the Public Good strategy for the UK?

Do you want to work in an organisation that champions diversity and inclusivity, and has been voted by Glassdoor as top in the UK for Work-life balance for the last 2 years in a row?

We are looking for experienced and forward-thinking Lead Software Engineer to join our Survey Data Collection (SDC) Service within our Digital Services and Technology Directorate.

The Service is building on the successes of Census to provide a generic, scalable and secure product set to enable contact with all respondents via email, letter and SMS, maximising response rates. This is a great opportunity to work with multiple tech stacks including; Python, Java, Golang, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, Cloud SQL, Terraform and Concourse.

Our Digital Services and Technology (DST) Directorate develops and operates much of the technology and services that ONS uses to deliver critical statistics. Demand for data and statistics are increasing and DST has a critical role in enabling the business to meet these demands.

As a Lead Software Engineer, you have a pivitol role while working collaboratively within a multi-disciplinary DevSecOps delivery team within the Survey Data Collection Service which significantly contributes to ONS statistical outputs, improving Government decision making. 

You will lead the design, build, support and improve new and existing digital products using a range of approaches including SDLC, CI/CD and DevSecOps to ensure we deliver value early for our users.

You will enjoy the benefits and opportunities of being part of an active Community of Practice within ONS and wider Civil Service, sharing and influencing best practice.

Responsibilities

• Designing and developing solutions, considering user needs, re-use, data management, resilience, performance, scalability and security in a service orientated approach in collaboration with the IT Architecture community and other development teams.
• Coaching and mentoring of other team members in best practice and setting standards (source control, development lifecycle, refactoring, coding standards etc.) both for software and infrastructure providing a culture of collaboration, communication and creativity.
• Investigating the advantages and managing the risks associated with the use of, open-source technologies and various tools and techniques, taking responsibility for technical decisions for the project.
• Ensuring automated testing at multiple levels and a continuous deployment environment, with an understanding of zero-downtime deployment techniques.
• Working collaboratively to ensure the operation of a live service with thousands of users via implementation of appropriate instrumentation to assure operational stability and security e.g. logging, monitoring and alerting.
• Working with the Delivery and Product Managers in understanding and communicating technical concepts, viability of plans and the associated risks to wider stakeholders.
• Taking a leadership role in the wider community, identifying good practices to adopt and sharing your experiences, e.g. through blog posts, tech talks at conferences.

Essential Criteria

• Experience of leading DevSecOps teams working with a range of different technical areas, e.g. software design and development, CI/CD, test, technical architecture, infrastructure (as code) and different hosting options, including Cloud (i.e. PaaS, IaaS). Ideally GCP including GKE, Cloud SQL, Kubernetes, PUB/SUB, Concourse, GitHub.
• Expert in multiple programming languages (specifically Java, Python and Go) and technologies across a range of different software products with a proven ability of how to select and apply them, considering accessibility and reusability.
• Broad range of experience in secure design and architecting of a wide range of technology products, considering threats and attach vectors, pioneering new approaches, forming standards and policies.
• Ability to shape the technical landscape of a product considering the wider implications of the technical strategies.
• Experience of running a live system, ensuring the operational aspects of logging, monitoring and alerting are built into the solution.

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Managing a Quality Service
• Working Together
• Making Effective Decisions

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Programming and Build
• Functional and Non-Functional testing
• Service support
• Communicating between technical and non-technical

We only ask for evidence of these technical skills on your application form:

• Programming and Build

The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our 5400 valued colleagues across the business.

Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that the benefits pack will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.

We are committed to supporting our people’s wellbeing by offering flexible ways of working that support a healthy life balance, and we are happy to have conversations around flexibility in line with our hybrid working policies.