About Us
 
We are MI5 and MI6. MI5 gathers intelligence from within the UK and MI6 gathers intelligence from overseas. We help to protect the UK along with GCHQ from a range of serious threats – everything from terrorism to organised crime, to cyber-crime and espionage.  
 
The Role        
 
Technology sits at the heart of everything we do at MI5 and MI6, enabling us to disrupt serious threats to UK national security.  We're currently looking for experienced Software Engineers who are prepared to take more of a senior role within multi-disciplinary product teams, who will provide the technical direction and mentoring for less experienced colleagues while working alongside product owners, business analysts and agile delivery colleagues to build and run secure applications and products.  You will play a vital role in a team that ensures MI5 and MI6 can stay ahead in an evolving digital world.
 
You will share our collective responsibility to keep the country safe and be keen to constantly improve yourself and your team. We actively encourage engineers to learn about our mission and build relationships with people working in those teams.  There are lots of opportunities to help you understand how MI5 or MI6 really works so we build better products.  You will be expected to take ownership of large problems, break them down and work with the team to deliver new features through the whole engineering lifecycle. Along with supporting products owned by the team, providing on-call if necessary, working with users to identify and fix defects and automating tests to maintain the assurance of our continuous integration pipelines. You will also support and mentor less experienced colleagues, helping them to understand what great software engineering looks like and participate in agile ceremonies per the team’s ways of working, guilds and cross-organisation initiatives to build our community of engineers.
 
We use agile methodologies to deliver products that are core to MI5's and MI6's operation, working to the full spectrum of investigative, analytical and corporate areas of the organisation. We make use of modern approaches and cloud technologies such as AWS and Azure. Our tech stacks vary between products (such as Java, C#, React.js, Oracle, Mongo, Elastic Search and Hadoop to name a few), giving engineers access to a career where they can move between teams to build experience in a wide number of technologies or develop a deep specialism in their preferred area. We embrace a DevSecOps mindset, our teams automate, run and support what we build. Whether it’s building a platform to enable the analysis of data, systems to track the progress of our investigations, compliance services to ensure we are operating legally or tooling to improve our developer experience, the nature of our work presents unique and fascinating engineering challenges, the likes of which you will never have seen before.  
 
About You

We are looking for experienced Software Engineers who are prepared to take more of a senior role in their team, providing technical direction and mentoring for less experienced colleagues. We’re interested in people who: 

• Have experience of developing software in at least one common language. For example, Java, C#, Python, GoLang or JavaScript 
• Are familiar with good continuous integration and continuous delivery principles 
• Understand agile methodology 
• Have awareness of design patterns and how to implement them appropriately with security in mind
• Are confident in leading others 
• Constantly want to improve themselves and learn new things 
• Enjoy communicating with technical and non-technical colleagues  

 Training and Development
 
Learning and development is central to our engineering ethos, and we invest heavily in our staff. As part of your MI5 or MI6 career, we will support you in broadening and deepening your technical and non-technical skills.  The  Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) capability framework is our Software Engineering profession capability framework, we use it as a compass to provide guidance, tools and support to enable you to progress your career further whether this is growing as a leader or an individual with deep technical knowledge and ability.  We have access to a wide variety of classroom and online learning, as well as certifications and our own development programmes. We work with external bodies such as the Institute for Engineering and Technology and the British Computing Society to support and fund accreditation for our staff, which could be in a specific technical area or more broadly, such as becoming a Chartered Engineer.
 

Rewards and Benefits

You’ll receive a starting salary of £50,500 plus other benefits including: 

• 25 Days Annual Leave automatically rising to 30 days after 5 years' service, and an additional 10.5 days public and privilege holidays (pro rata for part time)
• Opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme
• Personal Learning Budget
• Opportunities to work flexibly or part time (minimum coverage of 3 days), subject to business needs
• Interest-free season ticket loan
• Excellent pension scheme
• Cycle to work scheme
• Facilities such as a subsidised gym and restaurant, and on-site coffee bars
• Paid parental and adoption leave  

Culture and Working Environment 
 
As part of our team, you’ll discover an inclusive workplace that’s welcoming, supportive and encouraging. You’ll be part of an organisation where people want to support one another and make a difference. Aside from fostering an open culture, we’ve got a range of growing affinity groups. For example:  
 

• Ethnic Minority and gender equality networks
• Groups supporting wellbeing, mental health, neurodiversity and disability 
• Faith/No Faith communities for staff to come together 
• LGBTQ+ support networks

 
You’ll also find a variety of sports, activity, interest and social groups to help you settle in and connect with people with similar interests. 
 
Before You Apply
 
To work at MI5 or MI6 you need to be a British citizen. We do have a strict drugs policy, so once you start your application, you can’t take any recreational drugs and you’ll need to declare your previous drug usage at the relevant stage.
 
Honesty and integrity are really important if you want to work at MI5 or MI6. Take some time to read about the vetting process and make sure you meet the criteria in the vetting pages of the ‘How to Apply’ section. The process can take some time, but this is just because it’s thorough. Giving misleading information and omitting or concealing information during the recruitment and vetting process is viewed very seriously.
 
Please note, you should only launch your application from within the UK. If you are based overseas, you should wait until you visit the UK to launch an application. Applying from outside the UK will impact on our ability to progress your application.
 
Equal Opportunities
 
At MI5 and MI6 diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission. To protect the UK, we need a truly diverse workforce that reflects the society we serve. This includes diversity in every sense of the word: those with different backgrounds, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, ages, ways of thinking and those with disabilities or neurodivergent conditions. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including those from groups that are under-represented in our workforce.
 
We’re Disability Confident
 
MI5 and MI6 are proud to have achieved Leader status within the DWP’s Disability Confident scheme.  This is aimed at encouraging employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people.  Being Disability Confident, we aim to ensure that a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants that meet the minimum criteria for this position will be offered an interview where practicable; this is known as ‘Offer of an Interview’. To secure an interview for this vacancy, the minimum criteria (in order of application process) are:  

• Passing a sift of your application,
• Codility submission
• Completing a telephone interview

 
Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible to apply, you must be a British Citizen. One of your parents must be a British Citizen or must have the nationality or citizenship from our approved list of countries (for more info link to website / JD). If you hold dual nationality, of which one component is British, you will nonetheless be considered. (for more info link to website / JD). Candidates must normally have been resident in the UK for seven out of the last ten years. This is particularly important if you were born outside the UK. You can apply at the age of 17 years and 6 months, if successful you will not be offered a start date prior to your 18th birthday. Discretion is vital. You should not discuss your application, other than with your partner or a close family member. Please note, you should only launch your application from within the UK. If you are based overseas, you should wait until you visit the UK to launch an application. Applying from outside of the UK will impact on our ability to progress your application. Further information on our eligibility criteria can be found on the Applying section.
 
What to Expect

Our recruitment process is fair, transparent, and based on merit. Here is a brief overview of each stage, in order:

• You will be invited to upload your CV and complete an online application form, along with a codility test.
• If you pass, you’ll be invited to a telephone interview
• If you pass, you’ll be invited to a competency-based interview
• If you pass, you’ll start our vetting process

Please note, you must successfully pass each stage of the process in order to progress to the next. Your application may take around 6 - 9 months to process including vetting, so we advise you continue any current employment until you have received your final job offer.
 
Our Vetting

To work in this role, you will need the highest security clearance, known as Developed Vetting (DV). It’s something everyone in the UK Intelligence Community has to go through and it can take some time. As part of the DV process you will be asked to fill in a detailed questionnaire and attend an interview with a vetting officer. In your interview the vetting officer will have a thorough, compassionate and honest discussion with you about you as a person and your life experiences, to ensure holding a DV clearance is right for you. You don’t need to do any preparation for your vetting interview, just be honest and be yourself. All applicants for DV are treated impartially and consistently, irrespective of gender, race, disability, religion, age, sexual orientation and other protected characteristics.