Senior Software Engineer

Please note: Some occasional on-call and/or rota working may be required as part of these roles.

Person Specification

See selection process for further details.

If you would like to learn more about the role, please contact Aisha.Gultasab@dwp.gov.uk

Technical skills

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

• Technical Leadership

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 (opens in a new window).

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.

Hybrid Working

This 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.

If a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for the role and for you, you will normally be required to spend a minimum of 60% of your contracted working hours from your DWP office.

If you have a disability, caring responsibilities, or other circumstances that may affect your ability to meet the minimum office attendance requirement, please discuss this with us using the contact details in this advert.

Salary Information

Pay for this role is from £57,946 to £80,664.

The maximum salary for the grade is £68,205, however, a Digital Allowance of up to £12,459 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 substantive salary.

Existing Civil Servants who gain promotion will move to the bottom of the grade pay scale or receive a 10% increase applied to their current substantive salary, whichever is greater.

Any temporary allowances that you are currently in receipt of will not form part of the calculation to determine your pay. Any allowances that are in payment will cease when you move into your new role.

Artificial intelligence

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 (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

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:
  • Programming and Build: Strong hands-on experience in designing, building, and maintaining secure, scalable software using modern Java.
  • Agile working: Demonstrated experience working in agile, multi-disciplinary teams to deliver user-centred digital services. Ability to collaborate effectively with Product Managers, Delivery Managers, and other specialists.
  • Development Process Optimisation: Experience with AWS, containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes), and infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, CloudFormation). Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and automated testing.
  • Systems Design: Ability to design robust, resilient, and maintainable systems, contributing to architectural decisions and ensuring alignment with DWP’s technical strategy.
  • Information Security: Understanding of secure coding practices, service resilience, and operational support. Ability to ensure systems meet security, accessibility, and performance standards.
• Technical statement (up to 250 words). The following statement is aligned to the required technical skill of: Technical Leadership. This statement should be used to provide example(s) of how you meet the criterion below:
  • Proven ability to lead software engineering teams, providing technical direction and mentoring engineers. You should demonstrate how you have influenced stakeholders, shaped technical strategy, fostered continuous improvement and knowledge sharing, and driven improvements to engineering practices, processes, or tooling within large-scale operational environments.

Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

Ensure that all examples provided in your statements are taken directly from your own experience and that you describe the examples in your own words. If you choose to use gen-AI to support your statements, you must follow the guidelines outlined in the Artificial intelligence and recruitment guide.

The sift panel will use the information in your employment history, personal statement, and technical statement to assess your experience, skills, and knowledge