Frontend Engineer - £400 Inside IR35 - Manchester - Public Sector

Frontend Engineer - Public Sector (GDS)

Location: Manchester (1 day per week on-site)
Rate: £400 per day (Inside IR35)
Start: ASAP
Contract: 6 months initially (likely extension)

*Security Clearance essential*

Overview

A public sector organisation is seeking an experienced Frontend Engineer to join a multidisciplinary delivery team working on user-centred government services. The successful candidate will have strong experience building accessible, performant digital services following GDS (Government Digital Service) standards, alongside practical DevOps exposure in modern delivery environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop high-quality Front End components and applications using JavaScript, TypeScript, React, and Node.js.

• Build services to meet GOV.UK Design System and GDS Service Standards, ensuring accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA) and exceptional user experience.

• Collaborate with product managers, designers, Back End engineers, DevOps engineers, and user researchers in an agile team.

• Apply DevOps practices including automated pipelines, testing, and deployment workflows.

• Contribute to architectural discussions, documentation, and technical decision-making.

• Troubleshoot issues, support live services, and drive continuous improvement.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Strong commercial experience as a Frontend Engineer.

• Expertise in JavaScript, TypeScript, React, and Node.js.

• Proven experience working on GDS-aligned services, including:

  • GOV.UK Design System

  • GDS Service Standard

  • Accessibility best practices

• Hands-on experience with DevOps practices, such as:

  • CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, etc.)

  • Automated testing (Jest, Cypress, Playwright)

  • Monitoring/logging tools (eg, CloudWatch, DataDog, Azure Monitor)

• Solid understanding of REST API integration and modern Front End architecture.

• Experience using Git in collaborative environments.

Desirable Skills

• Experience in public sector or large government programmes.

• Exposure to cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).

• Familiarity with containerisation (Docker), microservices, or IaC (Terraform).

• Knowledge of performance optimisation, observability, and analytics.