Lead Developer – MoJ – G7
Location: National – Manchester Digital. Closing date: 2nd November 2025. Contract type: Permanent. Vacancy number: 11066.
Salary: London: £63,343 – £78,225 (may include allowance up to £14,882). National: £58,511 – £73,450 (may include allowance up to £14,939).
Working pattern: Full-time/Part-time/Flexible working.
Hybrid working model: We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your local office.
We are recruiting for Lead Software Developers in the Justice Digital team within the Legal Aid Agency Digital group. You will work in a highly collaborative, user‑centred culture and help build modern services that make a difference.
Key Responsibilities
In addition to hands‑on development, you will inspire, mentor, coach, manage and lead Software Developers within a business domain. You will focus on generating a culture of quality and maintaining a balance between building sustainable, well‑architected products and unlocking citizen value early.
Technical Leadership
* Collaborate with Technical Architects and Product Managers to set product direction.
* Collaborate with Technical Architects to help design systems and implement coherent and sustainable technical roadmaps.
* Lead discussions with Developers to nurture consensus on technical and team decisions.
* Support backlog refinement, helping plan, define and prioritise actionable tasks for the team.
* Build inclusivity and understanding by promoting strategies to share technical knowledge of our systems with appropriate documentation and other activities.
* Support Delivery Managers in unblocking value where necessary and honest representations of effort in an agile environment as the teams learn more.
Engineering Management
* Managing, coaching and growing people with a focus on their wellbeing and development.
* Support Delivery Managers in improving team maturity.
Engineering Profession
* Work with local Principal Developers and the wider community to improve and maintain good coding standards and practices.
* Help provide feedback on wider technical strategy of your business unit.
* Share knowledge and build enthusiasm for sharing via activities such as brown bags, workshops, chat discussions and other means.
* Encourage open discussion and drive communities in our primary communication tools.
* Have a mindset for growth and learning, looking for emerging technologies, tools and good practice.
* Help build and maintain a diverse, inclusive culture across the development community, growing awareness, inclusivity, and balance.
* Take part in the recruitment and onboarding of other Developers.
We rely on Java, Python or Ruby to write our application code, GitHub Actions for CI/CD, Sentry for application monitoring, Kubernetes and Docker to schedule and run our services (read about our Cloud Platform), AWS for most of our infrastructure, GOV.UK Design System for our web interfaces and use MacBook Pros. For front‑end development, we value a robust understanding of the underlying web technologies. We value well‑maintained, open‑source tools that can be used to produce semantic HTML, performant CSS and unobtrusive JavaScript or TypeScript, and we assess all our services against accessibility criteria. We’re happy to help you learn our tech stack once you’re part of our team, and do not require an exact match in your experience of languages.
Benefits
* 37 hours per week and flexible working options including working from home, working part‑time, job sharing, or working compressed hours.
* A £1k per person learning budget is in place to support all our people, with access to best‑in‑class conferences and seminars, accreditation with professional bodies, fully funded vocational programmes and e‑learning platforms.
* Staff can spend 10% of their time to dedicate to their development and growth.
* Generous civil service pension based on a defined benefit scheme, with employer contributions of 28.97% from April 1st 2024.
* 25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the Kings’ birthday. 5 additional days of leave once you have reached 5 years of service.
* Compassionate maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave policies, with up to 26 weeks leave at full pay, 13 weeks with partial pay, and 13 weeks further leave. And maternity support/paternity leave at full pay for 2 weeks, too!
* Wellbeing support including access to the Calm app.
* Bike loans up to £2500 and secure bike parking (subject to availability and location).
* Season ticket loans, childcare vouchers and eye‑care vouchers.
* 5 days volunteering paid leave.
* Free membership to BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.
* Some offices may have a subsidised onsite Gym.
Person Specification – Essential
* You have experience making and guiding complex technical decisions and contributing to technical strategy.
* You have experience nurturing a culture of good software practice that makes change easy.
* You have contributed towards building a high performing, inclusive team culture.
* You have experience in delivering value sooner and safer, through DevOps, XP or other ways of working that lead to agility and collaboration.
* You have experience either coaching or managing other people.
* You have been involved in building or contributing to a community of practice.
* Contribution towards the team e.g. being point of contact or team advocate, working with stakeholders, helping with DM/PM activities, improving processes.
* Contribution towards other developers: e.g. coaching / training / inspiring; encouraging L&D.
You will be required to meet the requirements for SC clearance.
How To Apply
Candidates must submit a CV and a Statement of Suitability (750 words) which describes how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above.
Application Guidance
Please access the following link for guidance on how to apply and how to complete a personal statement.
Skills
* Leadership
* Working together
* Developing self & others
* Making effective decisions
* Delivering at pace
Terms & Conditions
Review the Terms and Conditions which set out how we recruit and provide further information on the role and salary arrangements.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact digitalanddatarecruitment@justice.gov.uk
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