Senior Software Engineer (£44,241 to £58,997)

Job summary

Can you see yourself working with the latest technologies reaching 53 million users? If so, we are expanding our team and would love to hear from you!

Joining our department comes with many benefits, including:

• Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary. Read more about Civil Service Pensions Contribution rates
• 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service (up to a maximum of 30 days annual leave), plus 8 bank holidays and a privilege day for the King’s birthday
• Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.

Read more in the Benefits section below!

Find out more about what it's like working at Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency - Department for Transport Careers.

Job description

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) deliver wide reaching digital services to the UK public and industry. We maintain the national record of vehicles and drivers. If you have applied for a driving licence, changed vehicle, re-licensed your vehicle or completed a vehicle enquiry you would have used one of our services.

The time is right to join one of the leading agile, cloud and technical departments in the government, one that is constantly pushing the boundaries of technological innovation to find, develop, and introduce new and innovative technological advancements. On a modern cloud platform, we work with a range of industry-leading technologies, such as serverless, Docker, and Kubernetes.

If you are successful, you will be part of the new electronic Vehicle Excise Duty programme which is a new legislative, digital service being delivered by DVLA to modernise how Vehicle Excise Duty is administered and delivered digitally. This is an exciting time to join us!

Within and between our teams, we have a friendly and stable engineering community. Keeping work life enjoyable is key to us, and we strive to ensure the efficient and secure use of software and infrastructure.

Our current deliveries include:

• Two major programmes of work, modernising our drivers and vehicles services and systems.
• Entirely new services including a new customer portal, mobile digital driving licence and identity platform.
• The DVLA digital payment service that helps us collect around 6 billion pounds a year.
• New versions of key driving licence services that will help us to reduce paper forms, reduce waiting times and to enable all of our customers to transact digitally.

As part of our core business services, you will work with Java and SpringBoot alongside tools like OpenAPI. No specific Java experience is needed. All you need is a passion for building clean, maintainable, and secure applications using an object-oriented language.

If you’re working on the front-end, you’ll be developing applications and reusable components using a combination of Ruby on Rails and React. You will also have the opportunity to build and develop our external and internal UIs, so this is an exciting opportunity to deliver far reaching, intuitive and accessible front-end systems.

As part of our ongoing mission to support and develop all staff within the DVLA, you will be given a high spec Macbook and we will help you to achieve certification in areas such as AWS and Java, as well as giving you the freedom and support necessary to perform in your role and continuously develop your skill set.

DVLA have been using AI coding assistants for over two years and actively encourage and support the appropriate use of AI coding tools. We have an AI coding group and are working together to understand how to use AI coding assistants responsibly to build better digital services.

Your responsibilities will include, but aren’t limited to:

• Working within a technical framework of the project to meet customer requirements.
• Developing Software in an agile team environment.
• Application Support.
• Working closely with business analysts and agile delivery managers to prepare and review user stories and tasks.
• Some testing responsibilities.
• Mentoring junior developers within the team.

Great line management is important to us as an organisation, and we will equip and support line managers to develop the skills they need. We aim to empower line managers to create teams where people can flourish and deliver excellent outcomes for the public.

For further information on the role, please read the attached role profile. Please note that the role profile is for information purposes only - whilst all elements are relevant to the role, they may not all be assessed during the recruitment process. This job advert will detail exactly what will be assessed during the recruitment process.

Person specification

Required experience:

To be successful in this role you will need to have the following experience:

• Working as a software engineer across multiple teams and projects, developing software using a variety of modern technologies and tools.
• A passion for back-end, front-end development, security or serverless technology.
• You will need to be comfortable in using modern CI/CD tooling with an understanding of languages such as Java, Ruby, C#, HTML, Python or similar. As we develop, we are committed to the development of our employees, so we will help you achieve certification in these areas as well as AWS and Azure.
• You need to have a passion for modern software development technologies and standard methodologies.
• You would need to have had to communicate with engineering peers and business partners.

Additional Information

The role is part of the Government Digital and Data profession and utilises an enhanced Capability–Based Pay Framework which provides access to a Digital and Data allowance.

The base pay is £44,241. In addition to this the role includes a Digital and Data allowance of up to £14,756.

The value of allowance awarded will be based on an assessment of your skills and experience as demonstrated through the selection process. Here are more details on the pay framework.

Working for the DVLA Digital Team

At DVLA, licensing is just the start. Every project you implement, touch and deliver has a ripple effect that’ll wash across the nation. Here the work you’re doing has the capacity to change the way 53 million people interact with our services. As we aim to keep our roads some of the safest in the world, our innovative, transformative digital-led services help optimise a nation of individuals and business every single day.

To see how our people are transforming our digital services, head over to our DVLA Digital Services Blog and, to understand more about the great opportunities and benefits of working at DVLA read our Inside DVLA blog.

Working hours, office attendance and travel requirements

Full time roles consist of 37 hours per week. Whilst we welcome applications from those looking to work with us on a part-time basis, there is a business requirement for the successful candidate to be able to work at least 35 hours per week.

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