Senior Developer (Ruby on Rails) - 6 months - London (Mainly Remote) - £675pd Inside - SC Cleared

Senior Developer (Ruby on Rails) - 6 months - London (Bristol/Manchester) - £650-£675pd Inside - SC Cleared

A central government department is standing up a new content archiving capability within one of its major digital services, scaling an archiving policy across a large, high-traffic public-facing platform, auditing what should and shouldn't be retained, building bulk-unpublishing tooling, and laying the groundwork to automate archiving in future. This service supports millions of users a month across hundreds of thousands of pages, and is used by thousands of civil servants to manage government content, so this is a genuinely large-scale, brownfield problem space rather than a greenfield build. The team is standing up now, currently an Agile Delivery Manager and one Front End Developer, with several contingent campaigns running in parallel to build it out, and this Senior Developer will be one of the first technical hires, working across existing codebases owned by other teams within the wider service.

This is a problem-solving role rather than a pure coding one. The successful candidate will understand user needs and in collaboration with the rest of the team, propose solutions rather than simply working to a specification. The early months may involve little or no code at all, with the focus instead on understanding the problem space, wireframing ideas, and analysing potential approaches on paper before implementation begins.

Key Responsibilities:

• Work as part of a multidisciplinary agile team, getting involved in every part of the service life cycle, from user research through to continuously deploying code to production in AWS environments
• Build robust, performant Ruby on Rails applications to serve a variety of public and government needs, taking responsibility for the quality of code produced
• Implement tooling and automation to support the development, operation, reliability, security and continuous improvement of the systems worked on
• Help understand the problem space and propose solutions on paper, incorporating technical knowledge to analyse potential approaches, particularly in the early stages of the contract
• Take the service live, then hand over robust, well-documented changes to GDS civil servants at the end of the contract
• Provide technical leadership within the team, advising on and identifying the best approaches and solutions
• Take responsibility for solving complex issues, drawing on a broad knowledge of web technologies
• Share work and learning internally with the wider GDS community through blog posts, show and tells, and similar

Ideal Candidate:

• Proven Back End development experience, with strong, hands-on working knowledge of Ruby on Rails
• A problem solver first and a code writer second - someone who wants to understand the user need and shape the solution, rather than simply being handed a specification
• Comfortable working in large, complex organisations - not purely start-up environments - and confident collaborating across teams and stakeholders in that kind of structure
• Personable and collaborative, able to work well with a multidisciplinary team and a variety of stakeholders to find solutions to large problems, not just problems in code
• Understanding of software design principles and modern development approaches: automated testing, TDD, continuous integration, pair programming, code review and version control
• Awareness of common web security risks (eg OWASP Top 10) and corresponding mitigations
• Comfortable with ambiguity and able to work through extended periods with little or no coding, focused instead on discovery and problem definition
• Active or lapsed SC clearance that can be transferred (candidate can start on BPSS while transfer is underway)

Desirable Experience:

• Additional Ruby on Rails experience at scale, eg on a large content management system or similarly high-traffic public-facing platform
• AWS/cloud-based environments
• Tooling and automation for implementation
• Knowledge of deployment pipelines and continuous improvement, with experience of regularly deploying to production
• Previous Civil Service, wider government or local government experience (beneficial but not essential - relevant skills and experience matter more)
• Experience taking a service live and handing over to a permanent team

TL;DR

Job Title: Senior Developer

Contract Length: 6 months (no current plans to extend, dependent on outcome of the work)

Location: London (Ppredominantly remotely)

Daily Rate: £650 - £675

IR35 Status: Inside IR35

Clearance: Active or Lapsed SC needed