Lead Software Developer (SC Eligible/SC Cleared)

About Scrumconnect Consulting

Scrumconnect Consulting is a multi-award-winning digital consultancy, recognised for delivering impactful and innovative technology solutions across UK government departments. Our work has positively influenced the lives of over 40 million UK citizens.

We are passionate about user-centred design, agile delivery, and building digital services that make a real difference. Our teams work at the forefront of innovation, helping organisations transform and deliver high-quality, scalable solutions that truly matter.

Overview

We're looking for a hands-on Lead Software Developer to lead engineering on high-volume public services for our UK government clients.

You'll set the technical direction for your team, write code alongside them, and make sure what you build holds up under real-world volume. Much of the work means connecting modern Spring Boot services to long-standing Legacy systems, so knowing how to modernise safely counts as much as building something new.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the technical work of one or more agile teams, from design and build through to running in production.

• Set and uphold engineering standards, including code reviews, test-driven development, CI/CD, and maintainable code.

• Lead the design of Spring Boot services and robust data access layers using Spring Data JPA.

• Integrate modern services with Legacy SOAP/XML systems, using incremental patterns such as Strangler Fig.

• Drive performance across database queries, caching, overnight batch jobs, and high-volume transaction processing.

• Work with the client's architects on design, tooling, and decisions, and challenge choices that add complexity without adding value.

• Build to the client's technical standards and reference architecture.

• Support live services, leading incident response and longer-term resilience fixes.

• Work closely with product managers, designers, testers, and other team members to deliver user-focused services.

• Coach and mentor developers, and share knowledge so it stays with the client team.

• Contribute to the Scrumconnect engineering community.

Required Skills and Experience

• Proven experience leading engineering teams and building production systems with Java and Spring Boot.

• Deep practical knowledge of Spring Data JPA, including entity mapping, transactions, auditing, and lazy/eager loading trade-offs.

• Experience integrating modern services with Legacy SOAP/XML systems and modernising them incrementally.

• Hands-on AWS experience, ideally EKS, RDS PostgreSQL, SQS, SNS, and S3, with infrastructure as code such as Terraform.

• Database tuning and batch processing experience on high-volume transactional services.

• Confidence getting more out of existing frameworks before reaching for new technology.

• Secure-by-default engineering and confidence supporting services in production, using observability tools such as Splunk or Grafana.

• A track record of mentoring developers, reviewing code, and raising engineering standards across teams.

• Experience in Scrum or Kanban teams, using tools such as Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket.

Desirable

• Experience delivering in UK government or the wider public sector, inside structured and governed environments.

• Experience leading Legacy modernisation and service migration.

• Familiarity with the GDS Service Manual and Technology Code of Practice.

• Experience working in blended, multi-supplier delivery teams.

• Community contributions such as talks, blog posts, or open source.

Diversity and Inclusion

At Scrumconnect Consulting, we believe that diversity drives innovation and better outcomes. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where every individual is valued, respected, and supported.

We welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds and actively encourage individuals from underrepresented groups, including women, people with disabilities, and diverse communities, as well as those seeking flexible working arrangements.

As a Disability Confident Level 1 employer, we are committed to providing reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process and during employment to ensure equal opportunities for all.