These roles may be located in one of the following locations; Birmingham, Blackpool, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Sheffield. Please find further information on the Corporate hub locations here. Please note that for candidates requesting to work in Newcastle, this role will be based at Benton Park View from September 2025, and then at 1 Pilgrim Place in Newcastle city centre by the end of 2027. Job Summary Please note this role requires you to pass Security Check clearance. For further information, please see 'Selection process details'. Are you a Senior Software Engineer with expertise across multiple languages and full-stack applications, looking to utilise cutting edge technologies to develop and deliver products? Do you want to use your skills and experience to help shape and deliver the future of digital services that impact millions of lives? Do you want to work on meaningful technology that drives real-world change? We are looking for outstanding Senior Software Engineers to join our Digital Modernisation and Efficiency team who have a strong background in leadership and strategy alongside the skills and knowledge of multiple programming languages and full-stack development. Our Senior Software Engineers contribute to demanding and exciting digital services for the UK Government. They are part of changing the face of public services with the potential to dramatically transform the future of millions of people. You’ll work in a collaborative, agile environment alongside talented engineers, architects, and product teams. We value clean code, automation, and continuous improvement. Whether you come from a commercial tech background or have public sector experience, you’ll find opportunities to innovate, lead, and grow. Our engineers work across multiple cloud platforms, including AWS and Azure, leveraging cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes, AWS Lambda, and Terraform. These are supported by robust CI/CD pipelines to ensure efficient and reliable delivery. We use modern technologies including Java, Node.js and Python. You’ll have access to excellent learning and development, flexible working, and a strong engineering community that supports your career progression. Make an impact. Build something that matters. Job Description As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll play a key leadership role in our agile delivery teams, shaping the future of digital services in the UK’s largest government department. Key Responsibilities Lead the design, strategy, development, and deployment of high-quality software solutions that meet user needs and policy intent. Champion engineering best practices including CI/CD, automated testing, and cloud-native development. Mentor and support junior engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement. Collaborate with Product Owners, Delivery Managers, Architects, Researchers, Testers, Designers and other specialists to deliver value iteratively. Ensure systems are secure, resilient, and performant, adhering to government standards and accessibility requirements. Build capability across your teams through coaching and mentoring, training and development, formal qualifications Lead in one or more of our Engineering teams ensuring best practice and standards. Develop and foster a collaborative team culture that produce world class software solutions. Work across the entire technical stack, including architecture, frontend, CI/CD pipelines, databases, backend frameworks, APIs and user interfaces to ensure quality and consistency. Your role will involve regular travel between the Digital hubs. As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll play a key leadership role in our agile delivery teams, shaping the future of digital services in the UK’s largest government department. Key Responsibilities Lead the design, strategy, development, and deployment of high-quality software solutions that meet user needs and policy intent. Champion engineering best practices including CI/CD, automated testing, and cloud-native development. Mentor and support junior engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement. Collaborate with Product Owners, Delivery Managers, Architects, Researchers, Testers, Designers and other specialists to deliver value iteratively. Ensure systems are secure, resilient, and performant, adhering to government standards and accessibility requirements. Build capability across your teams through coaching and mentoring, training and development, formal qualifications Lead in one or more of our Engineering teams ensuring best practice and standards. Develop and foster a collaborative team culture that produce world class software solutions. Work across the entire technical stack, including architecture, frontend, CI/CD pipelines, databases, backend frameworks, APIs and user interfaces to ensure quality and consistency. Your role will involve regular travel between the Digital hubs. Person specification See selection process for further details. If you would like to learn more about the role, please contact oliver.canham1@dwp.gov.uk. Technical skills We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process: Technical Leadership and Mentoring Alongside your salary of £57,946, Department for Work and Pensions contributes £16,786 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides. 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 25 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 £57,946 to £68,205. The maximum salary for the grade is £68,205, however a Digital Allowance of up to £10,312 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 will maintain their current salary. Existing Civil Servants who gain promotion will either move to the bottom of the grade pay scale or get a 10% increase to their current salary whichever would be the greater. Selection process details This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Experience and Technical skills. Stage 1: Application Your Application Will Consist Of Four 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. Personal statement - up to 1000 words. This statement should be used to provide examples of how you meet the essential criteria below: Software Development Expertise - Strong hands-on experience and expert knowledge in designing, building, and maintaining secure, scalable software using modern programming languages including Java, Python, JavaScript, C# and Node.js to support full stack development. Modern Testing - Extensive experience of Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) practices and techniques. Microservice Architecture - Detailed working knowledge and experience of APIs, RESTful services and Microservice Architectures. Cloud Practices - Expert knowledge and experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes), and infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, CloudFormation). Testing and Automation - Experience and the skills required to build up a useful, robust automated test suite to support a continuous deployment environment. Database Technologies - Strong working knowledge and practical experience of SQL and NoSQL database applications such as Postgres, MySQL and MongoDB. Technical statement (up to 250 words). The following statement is aligned to the required technical skill of Technical Leadership and Mentoring: Describe your experience of influencing and leading the strategy and tooling of a multidisciplinary engineering team, communicating with stakeholders, driving delivery, ensuring standards, ways of working and building supportive and fostering a collaborative culture. The sift panel will use the information in your employment history, personal statement, and technical statement to assess your experience, skills and knowledge. An initial sift will be conducted using the technical statement. Candidates who pass the initial sift will be progressed to a full sift. 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 or technical statement contain any personal details your application will be withdrawn. Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application; however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate, and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own), applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use. A candidate’s guide to artificial intelligence (AI) in recruitment. Stage 2: Coding Test Candidates who are successful at the sift stage will be sent a coding test to complete remotely. The exercise will focus on the technical elements listed in the essential criteria in this advert. Full details will be sent to candidates when the exercise is issued. Candidates will have 7 days to complete the test from the date of receipt. Candidates that are not successful in the technical exercise will not progress to the interview stage. Please add: Digital.EngineeringRecruitment@dwp.gov.uk to your safe senders list or monitor your spam folder to ensure safe receipt of the code test via email. The code test must be completed by the candidate using their skillset without using any AI or generative tools. Stage 3: 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 above. Interviews will take place from late November 2025. Interview dates to be confirmed. Other Information If high application volumes are received, the benchmark for candidates to proceed to the next stage may be raised. In line with our commitment to the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS), we aim to advance all candidates applying under the DCS who meet the minimum standard. However, we may only progress those candidates who best meet the required standards. All successful candidates and those placed on reserve will be posted in merit list order by location. For these vacancies, we strongly recommend that applicants consult with an immigration specialist or qualified advisor to assess their eligibility for Visa Sponsorship before deciding to apply. Please note that while we consider sponsorship requests in accordance with current DWP guidance and Home Office policy, sponsorship cannot be guaranteed. 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. For further information on National Security Vetting please visit the Demystifying Vetting website. 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 6months 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. The Evidence You Provide Must Relate To Your Own Experiences. If Evidence Of Plagiarism, Or Sharing Of Questions, Information Or Answers Throughout Any Part Of The Selection Process Is Found, Your Application Will Be Withdrawn. Examples Of Plagiarism Can Include Presenting the work, ideas and experience of others as your own Copying content from an online/published source Using forms of Artificial Intelligence to produce application content which you present as your own. 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 Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment. This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Experience and Technical skills. Security Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks. Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks. Nationality requirements This Job Is Broadly Open To The Following Groups UK nationals nationals of the Republic of Ireland nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window) nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020 Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window) Working for the Civil Service The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants. 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). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy. The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants. 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). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy. Diversity and Inclusion The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window). This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative. The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window). Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records. Contact point for applicants Job Contact Name : Oliver Canham Email : oliver.canham1@dwp.gov.uk Recruitment team Email : digitalrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk Further information Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission Recruitment Principles. If you wish to make a complaint, please find further details here: https://careers.dwp.gov.uk/how-we-recruit/.