Software Developer (Ruby)

Job Description:

Description

Software Developer (Ruby)

Location: London, Sheffield, Birmingham, Nottingham, Glasgow

Closing Date: 25/11/2021

Interviews: W/C 6th December 2021

Grade: SEO

Salary: £41,747 - £57,400 which may include an allowance up to £15,653 for London

£36,049 - £53,000 which may include an allowance up to £16,951 for a national role

The Role

We’re recruiting for a Developer here at MoJ Digital & Technology, to be part of our warm and collaborative HMPSS team.

You will be a member of a multidisciplinary team, write code and operate software in either our Prison or Probation service areas.

You will work with user researchers, product managers, designers, business analysts, delivery managers and content specialists who share a vision for making better government through smarter use of technology. You will innovate to radically transform public services for the better.

Our community

We currently have over 50 experienced developers who make up the broader engineering community.

Take a look at our developer blog and read about one of our developers talking about her experiences joining during lockdown.

To help picture your life at MoJ D&T please take a look at our blog and our Digital & Technology strategy.

About HMPPS Digital

HMPPS Digital is a part of MOJ Digital and Technology.

Her Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) is rapidly transforming and HMPPS Digital’s mission is to help rehabilitate and reduce reoffending by building world-class services that put the user first, overhauling the legacy technology that underpins our systems and making better use of data to improve our services.

HMPPS Digital has a diverse portfolio of products and services to suit a wide range of developer skills. We have a mature, in-house software development team, building services with both public and professional user interfaces, built on top of our APIs and Cloud Platform.

The product team you are placed on will be agreed closer to your start date but examples of products include:

Use of Force - A service to allow recording of Use of Force incidents.https://github.com/ministryofjustice/use-of-force

Prisoner API - An API for our prison custodial management service https://github.com/ministryofjustice/prison-api

Whereabouts API - An API to manage the location of prisoners https://github.com/ministryofjustice/whereabouts-api/

Community API - An API for accessing and updating probation data https://github.com/ministryofjustice/community-api

Probation Offender Search - Probation offender search via Elastic Search https://github.com/ministryofjustice/probation-offender-search

About MoJ Digital and Technology

MOJ Digital and Technology have a clear vision - to develop a digitally-enabled justice system that works more simply for users - and we’re looking for talented people to help us achieve it.

We’re making things better by building adaptable, effective services and making systems that are simple to use for staff and citizens. It can be challenging but it’s also important and rewarding.

Key Responsibilities:

As a developer at MoJ you will:

Build user-centred, open-source, RESTful web systems to serve a variety of citizen and government needs

Build automated tests to support our continuous deployment environment

Share knowledge of tools and techniques with the wider team and community, both developers and non-developer.

Transform government into a more agile organisation by helping to embed modern development practice.

Help build and maintain a diverse, inclusive culture across the development community, growing awareness, inclusivity, and balance

Occasionally participate in 2nd line support during office hours, and sometimes out of hours

Have the potential to manage, coach and develop a small number of less experienced developers

Help with hiring, taking part in the recruitment of other developers

To learn more about what developers do in government please review the DDaT Capability Framework:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/software-developer#developer

Our tech stack

We rely heavily on:

Ruby/Ruby on rails and Kotlin to write our backend services

Typescript to build our front end services

Circle CI for deployment

Sentry/Prometheus for application monitoring

Application Insights for full observability into your applications, infrastructure and network

Elastic/Kibana for Data visualization

Kubernetes and Docker to schedule and run our service(read about our Cloud Platform)

AWS for most of our infrastructure

GOV.UK Design System for our web interfaces

Macs to do all of the above

If this feels like an exciting challenge, something you are enthusiastic about, and want to join our team please read on and apply!

This is an MoJ Grade SEO role with a salary of ££41,747 - £57,400(London), £36,049 - £53,000(National) depending on skills and experience plus great benefits:

Benefits:

37 hours per week and flexible working options including working from home, working part-time, job sharing, or working compressed hours.

We are committed to nurturing our staff and provide lots of training and development opportunities with learning platforms such as: Linux Academy, O’Reilly, Pluralsight, Microsoft Learning, Civil Service Learning, GDS Academy, etc.

10% dedicated time to learning and development with a budget of £1000 a year per person

Generous civil service pension based on defined benefit scheme, with employer contributions of 26-30% depending on salary.

25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the Queens’ 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.

Nurturing professional and interpersonal networks including those for Careers & Childcare, Gender Equality, PROUD and SPIRIT

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:

Meet the requirements for BPSS clearance

Evidence of broad experience one or more roles or projects

Experience in backend development in Ruby, Typescript/Node, Kotlin or Java

Evidence of experience working with modern tools and techniques

Want to make a positive impact on the communities we serve

Thrive when you work as part of a team

Enjoy learning and helping others

Hold yourself and others to a high standard

Solve problems in a systematic way

You’ll value:

Continuous learning and development

Being inclusive, supportive, inquisitive and responsible (MoJ D&T core values)

Working with integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality (Civil Service core values)

Desirable:

Experience of Java or Kotlin to write our backend services

Experience of Node/Express to write our frontend services

We’re happy to help you learn our tech stack once you’re part of our team.

Check out GitHub for a closer look at the technology we use. We subscribe to the manifesto for agile software development.

We welcome the unique contribution diverse applicants bring and do not discriminate on the basis of culture, ethnicity, race, nationality or national origin, age, sex, gender identity or expression, religion or belief, disability status, sexual orientation, educational or social background or any other factor.

Our values are Purpose, Humanity Openness and Together. Find out more here about how we celebrate diversity and an inclusive culture in our workplace.

How to Apply

Candidates must submit CV and cover letter which describes how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above.

In D&T, we recruit using a combination of the Digital, Data and Technology Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process:

Managing change

Making effective decisions

Delivering at Pace

Working together

Your application will be reviewed against the Person Specification above by a diverse panel.

Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a 1-hour panel interview held via video conference.

Terms & Conditions

Please review our Terms & Conditions which set out the way we recruit and provide further information related to the role and salary arrangements.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact recruitment@digital.justice.gov.uk