Junior Software Developer - Charity Commission - EO

Manchester Digital; Manchester; On-site; GBP 45,000 - 65,000; Full time

Job summary

Manchester Digital is seeking a motivated software engineer to contribute to delivering software components in a collaborative environment. You will work within a team following agile or waterfall practices, depending on project needs, and help improve guidelines while developing your skills under supervision.

You will support colleagues as part of the DDaT Directorate and collaborate with the Charity Commission to achieve shared goals and deliver the Commission's strategy.

Qualifications

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to troubleshoot deployment issues.
• Ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams (developers, QA, operations).
• Experience in agile environments and adaptability to changing priorities.

Responsibilities

• Availability and capacity management to ensure services have minimal downtime.
• Information security practices and controls understanding.
• Apply modern development standards and best practices in software development.
• Prototype and test ideas to prove concepts before final design.
• Provide service support and fix faults following procedures to keep services running.
• Assist in systems design and contribute to larger system components.
• Explain integration principles and potential interface challenges between systems.
• Maintain focus on user needs and incorporate user stories throughout development.

Skills

Team collaboration

Problem-solving

Agile and Waterfall

Tools

HTML/CSS/Java/Javascript/C#

Job description

Location

Bootle, North West England, L20 7HS : Newport, Wales, NP10 8XG

About The Job

Job summary

Job Purpose

In this role, you will deliver software components while working under supervision to meet user needs following best practice guidelines and helping to improve those guidelines. You will be able to develop skills while working under supervision to deliver stories in a multidisciplinary team within an agile or waterfall framework depending on the needs of the project. You will support colleagues as part of a collaborative DDaT directorate as well as operating as a partner to the wider Charity Commission to support the achievement of the shared goals and objectives and delivering a successful Commission strategy. You will understand and be proficient in different types of testing. You will also be aware of but not responsible for security and maintaining Charity Commission systems, identifying issues in production while meeting the Government Service Standard and the Technology Code of Practice.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities

Availability and capacity management, ensuring services are available with as little downtime or disruption as possible, and that we have sufficient resources to support emerging business needs. You will be able to explain availability and capacity management processes

Information security

Information security involves maintaining the security, confidentiality and integrity of information. You will be able to use information security practices and available security controls to contribute to protecting solutions and services

Modern development standards

Modern development standards involve using the latest technologies and best practices to improve the quality of the software development process.

You Will Be Able To:

• explain the most important principles of modern development standards and how they apply to your work
• apply modern development standards principles under guidance

Programming and build

design, code, test, correct and document simple programs or scripts under the direction of others

Prototyping

Prototyping a service or product involves exploring, testing and sharing different concepts before committing to the final design.

You Will Be Able To:

• understand when to use a specific prototyping technique or method
• show the value of prototyping to your team

Service support

Service support involves fixing service faults and maintaining the underlying infrastructure, ensuring processes are in place to keep the service running efficiently.

You Will Be Able To:

• help fix service faults following agreed procedures
• carry out maintenance tasks on service support infrastructure

Systems design

Systems design involves creating the specification and design of systems to meet defined business needs.

You Will Be Able To:

• assist as part of a team in the design of components of larger systems

Systems integration

Systems integration involves identifying points of connection between different systems and processes, or opportunities to combine them, and designing how the components communicate.

You Will Be Able To:

• explain the process and principles of integrating systems.
• describe challenges of designing, building and testing interfaces between systems

User focus

User focus involves understanding the user needs to develop a detailed understanding of the problems that need to be solved.

You Will Be Able To:

• show an awareness or understanding of user experience analysis and its principles
• explain the purpose of user stories and the focus on user needs

Person specification

Ability

Essential Criteria

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to troubleshoot complex deployment issues.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams (developers, QA, operations).
• Capacity to work in agile environments, adapting to changing priorities.
• Ability to document processes and communicate technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong focus on automation, efficiency, and continuous improvement.
• Ability to write and maintain clean code, which is production ready, maintainable and documented.

Experience

• Experience of working within a multi-disciplined team in a software development/engineering context.
• Experience of designing, coding, testing, correcting and documenting simple programmes or scripts within and across the full development stack including the use of HTML/CSS/Java/Javascript/C#. (possibly under the direction of others)
• Experience of building software following design standards and that conform to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
• Familiarity with GitHub for source control and collaborative development.

Technical

At least one programming language for development of enterprise and public facing applications, ideally in our core stack but other languages and a desire to learn is acceptable (Java, C#).

General Technical Experience

• Assisting as part of a team on design of components of larger systems.
• Awareness of systems integration and the challenges of designing, building, and testing interfaces between systems.
• Object-Oriented design/development.
• Developing frontend web applications
• Developing secure applications