Lead Software Engineers Ref. 3260

Salary: You’ll also receive a one-off recruitment bonus of £5,000, (split into 2 payments, £2,500 on arrival & £2,500 on successful completion of probation) plus the opportunity to qualify for an increased skills payment of up to £19,113 once you’re in role and following on from a successful skills assessment.

Flexible Working: we offer a strong work-life balance, supporting full-time, part-time, and flexible hours. You’ll be predominantly office-based, with working from home limited and subject to business need.

About Us
GCHQ is an intelligence, cyber and security agency with a mission to keep the UK safe.  We use cutting-edge technology, ingenuity, and partnerships to identify, analyse and disrupt threats. Working with our intelligence partners MI5 and MI6, we protect the UK from terrorism, cyber-attacks, and espionage. At GCHQ you’ll do varied and fascinating work in a supportive and inclusive environment that puts the emphasis on teamwork.

The Role 
As a Lead Software Engineer, you won’t just lead an Agile team, you’ll be part of a team which supports and enables new capabilities and tackles real-world problems. If you’re passionate about problem-solving and can think creatively to deliver solutions to complex challenges, this role presents a truly unique opportunity. Working at a deep technical level, your fluency in a range of software engineering methods, languages and frameworks, will influence tech adoption and direction. Excited by innovation and eager to discover new techniques, you’ll bring fresh ideas to the team, influencing leaders and working diligently to build close relationships with customers, our partners, and the wider software engineering team.
 
Working with technical and non-technical customers, you’ll contribute to large-scale projects to deploy into different environments including on-prem and Cloud. Plus, you’ll lead planning sessions that’ll shape our working processes, and oversee mentoring and pair programming with junior team members. You’ll set the standard for what good looks like, sharing digital and innovative ways of working with the team and across the software engineer skills community. Colleagues will trust you to decide the best way to get things done and how best to meet the needs of our security mission.  

As a Lead Software Engineer, your work will be unique and varied, supporting the team to engage, coordinate and cooperate to resolve issues in an ever-evolving environment.  You’ll promote Agile technical practises and remove barriers to your team’s progress. You’ll contribute to the architecture and design of new and existing systems, but above all you’ll have the autonomy to undertake your role, while being supported by those around you. This is a practical role with plenty of opportunity to develop yourself and others.

About You
As a Lead Software Engineer, you’ll need to demonstrate your knowledge of modern computer languages and frameworks such as C++, Golang, Java, JavaScript, NET, Node, Python, Rust, or Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) along with programming techniques and your ability to work within this area. 

You’ll be organised and comfortable planning your own and others time. Working with minimal guidance, you’ll be able to critically assess your outputs, as well as those of others inside and outside the team. You’ll also be empathetic, a persuasive communicator, and a strategic long-term thinker. A resilient problem-solver and self-motivated, you’ll bring innovation to the team to ensure it continues to deliver to the high standards you expect.
 
We welcome applications from experienced colleagues who currently work within a related role such as Multi-skilled Software Engineering, Cloud Engineering and Security, UX, Site Reliability Engineering, Front-End design, Agile, Solution Architecture, RF Software Engineering, Data Engineering, and Machine Learning Operations. With the experience required to oversee the design and development of uniquely challenging software projects. 

You’ll bring your considerable knowledge of solving deep, technical problems to our missions, building creative solutions in a dynamic environment. The software projects you’ll work on could be complex in their depth (algorithmic uniqueness, multi-threading, and API protection) or in their wider interactions (services, integrations and systems thinking). So, you’ll consider their non-functional requirements, ensuring effectiveness across scale, resilience, and security. 

A proven leader with the ability to develop the skills of others, you’ll utilise your knowledge of modern languages and frameworks, collaborating with staff at all levels and mentoring junior members of the team.

Using your negotiating and communication skills, you’ll lead and advise Senior Software Engineers as well as technical and non-technical customers. You’ll act as a bridge between customers and have an influence outside your local area, showing an understanding and a variety of techniques at different phases of the full lifecycle of software-based systems – maintaining awareness of the wider picture.

Training and Development
At GCHQ, we invest in your skills and adapt to the way you like to learn. We’ll support and encourage you every step of the way, helping you to become an integral part of our innovative team. We are dedicated to allowing you the space and resources for development, innovation, and experimentation, and we encourage you to spend up to 30% of your time to achieve this. We value your ability to learn and adapt to new challenges, so we’ll invest in your skills and the way you like to learn, from books, study, courses, and conferences to stretching work with the support of the team.

You’ll be encouraged to drive and shape your own personal development and you’ll have access to learning and development opportunities tailored to your role. We’ll cover the cost and provide you with the time and support to gain professional qualifications and certifications.  

When you start, you’ll have a full induction to our organisation, which will give you knowledge on how we operate. Our training covers a multitude of software disciplines, including Front end design, RF Software Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering, Data Engineering, Solutions architecture, Machine Learning Operations, UX, Agile, Cloud Engineering & Security. 

From day one, you’ll have access to mentors and subject matter experts. We’ll help you create a structured development and career plan that’s right for you.

Examples of potential training for a Lead Software Engineer include:

•    AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification
•    AWS Developer Certification / AWS Solution Architect Certification
•    Certified SCRUM Master
•    Microservices Architecture Training
•    Advanced Fundamentals / Patterns
•    Advanced Linux & CLI
•    User Experience
•    Internal Training – for example Team Leadership (difficult conversations, leading a team etc.)
•    Cloud Academy / Pluralsight / O'Reilly Subscription

Rewards and Benefits
You’ll receive a starting salary of £60,749 - £66,614 dependent on skills and experience, with an additional one-off recruitment bonus of £5,000, 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
•    Opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme
•    Interest-free season ticket loan (parking and travel)
•    Excellent pension scheme
•    Cycle to work scheme
•    Facilities such as a gym and restaurant, and on-site coffee bars (at some locations)
•    Paid parental and adoption leave

Equal Opportunities
At GCHQ 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, ages, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, 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 such as women, those from an ethnic minority background, people with disabilities and those from low socio-economic backgrounds.

Find out more about our culture, working environment and diversity on our website.
 
We’re Disability Confident
GCHQ 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, we aim to offer a person-to-person interview to any candidate who self-identifies as disabled and meets the essential criteria for the role. This is our “Offer of Interview” (OOI). To secure an interview for this vacancy, the essential criteria (in order of application process) are:

• Demonstrate an ability to solve complex problems and build solutions.
• Demonstration of management skills in supervising design and development of software features and/or software teams.
• Evidence an ability to collaborate with others of different technical skillsets and experience levels.

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

•    Application Sift.
•    Technical and competency-based interview, including a presentation.
•    If successful, you will receive a conditional offer of employment, subject to vetting.

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.

Before You Apply
To work at GCHQ, you need to be a British citizen or hold dual British nationality. You can read full eligibility criteria here.

This role requires the highest security clearance, known as Developed Vetting (DV). It’s something everyone in the UK Intelligence Community undertakes. You can find out more about the vetting process here.

Please note we 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.

Before you apply, we advise you to consider setting up a separate email address for your contact with us, to ensure your personal and application correspondence remain separate. Try to avoid having identifying features in your email address, such as your first and/or surname and date of birth. This is good practice and will help you to manage your application with us more discretely.

The role is based in Central Manchester, Greater Manchester or Cheltenham, so you’ll need to live within a commutable distance. Please consider any financial implications and practicalities before submitting an application.

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.
 
Right to Withdraw Statement: 
Please be aware that we reserve the right to bring forward the closing date for this role from the original closing date once a certain number of applications have been received. Please be mindful of this and submit your application at your earliest convenience to avoid disappointment.