Software Engineer

Careers at MI5, MI6 and GCHQ; Manchester; On-site; GBP 64,000 - 68,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 Days Annual Leave

Development budget

Season ticket loan

Cycle to work

On-site facilities

Job summary

MI5 is seeking Software Engineers with multiple years of experience to join a multi-disciplinary product team. You’ll develop secure applications and mentor colleagues, working with Product Owners, Business Analysts, Delivery Managers, Data Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers to build and run secure products.

You’ll apply agile methodologies and cloud technologies such as AWS and Azure, while supporting on-premises platforms and legacy frameworks in a secure environment.

Qualifications

• Several years of software engineering experience in multi-disciplinary teams.
• Experience mentoring junior engineers and contributing to engineering practices.

Responsibilities

• Develop secure applications using Java, Python, C#, or similar languages.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, Analysts and Data Scientists across teams.
• Implement automated tests and support CI/CD pipelines within a DevSecOps culture.

Skills

Software engineering

Mentoring

Agile methodologies

Tools

AWS

Azure

DevSecOps

Job description

Salary:

£64,005 – £68,185 (depending on skills and experience) with an opportunity to qualify for additional allowances and a skills-related payment under the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework (GDDPCF) - formerly known as DDaT.

Hours

37 hours per week.

Flexible working

We support full-time, part-time, compressed hours and other flexible working patterns. This is primarily an office-based role, and therefore, opportunities for home or remote working will be limited and dependent on business needs.

About us

MI5 keeps the country safe from serious threats like terrorism and attempts by states to harm the UK, its people and way of life. We carry out investigations by obtaining, analysing, and assessing intelligence, and then work with a range of partners including MI6 and GCHQ to disrupt these threats. Through our protective security arm, we provide advice and guidance to government, businesses and other organisations about how to keep themselves safe. A role in MI5 means you'll do unique and challenging work in a supportive and encouraging environment, making a real difference to UK national security.

The role

Technology sits at the heart of everything we do at MI5. We're looking for Software Engineers with multiple years of experience who are prepared to take on a more senior role within a multi-disciplinary product team. You’ll develop solutions, mentor less experienced colleagues whilst working alongside a range of technical specialists including Product Owners, Business Analysts, Delivery Managers, Data Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers, to build and run secure applications and products. You’ll be using agile methodologies to deliver products that are core to MI5’s operations, and you’ll be using cloud technologies such as AWS and Azure as well, supporting on-premises platforms and long-established technologies and frameworks.

You’ll share our collective responsibility to keep the country safe and be keen to constantly improve yourself and your team, taking on ownership of large problems, breaking them down and working with the team to deliver new features throughout the engineering lifecycle. You’ll support the products owned by the team, working with users to identify and fix defects (providing on-call support if necessary) developing automated tests to maintain the assurance of our products and deploy through continuous integration pipelines.

You’ll support and mentor less experienced colleagues and help them to understand what great engineering looks like, promoting best practises, participating in our engineering community and guilds, and encourage cross-organisation initiatives to help build our community of engineers. Many of our engineers work directly within our mission teams and all engineers have a unique opportunity to see first‑hand how their work contributes to UK national security, while remaining part of a supportive and inclusive technical profession.

Our tech stacks vary between products (such as Java, Python, C#, React.js, Oracle, Mongo, Elastic Search and Hadoop to name a few). We embrace DevSecOps mindset, and our teams automate, run and support what we build. You’ll be working under the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework (formerly known as DDaT), which recognises and rewards specialist expertise. Due to the nature of our work, most of the teams only work from the office. There are limited opportunities to work in a hybrid way. This is not guaranteed and dependent on the business need. Whether it’s building a platform to enable the analysis of data systems to track the progress of our investigations, developing robust and scalable capabilities for our Data Science teams, 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.

About you

We value your solid communication skills, as you communicate effectively with technical and non-technical colleagues. You’ll demonstrate competency in leadership and you’re continuously looking for opportunities to develop and learn new engineering practices and approaches.

Training and development

We’re committed to developing you and recognise this will look different for everyone. We’ll use the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework (formerly known as DDaT) as a compass to provide guidance and tools to support you. You can find out more about the framework here: Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework. There’ll be opportunities to gain qualifications and pursue specialist pathways, as well as undertaking tailored training, coaching and mentoring. You will also have up to 20% innovation and personal development time.

As you develop, grow, and maintain your technical skills, you will have the opportunity to progress through GDDPCF pay points. You’ll need to regularly demonstrate and accredit your skills based on the framework. If you don’t maintain the required skills, you’ll be given the opportunity and support to rectify this, as you could revert to a lower level of capability and pay.

Rewards and benefits

You’ll receive a starting salary of between £64,005 – 68,185 (depending on skills and experience) 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
• dedicated development budget
• interest‑free season ticket loan
• cycle to work scheme
• facilities such as a gym, restaurant and on‑site coffee bars (at some locations)
• paid parental and adoption leave.

Equal opportunities

At MI5 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

MI5 is proud to have achieved Leader status within the Department for Work and Pensions’ Disability Confident scheme. This initiative encourages employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain, and develop disabled people. As a Disability Confident Organisation, we aim to ensure that a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants who best meet the essential criteria for this position will be offered an interview, where it is practical for us to do so. (This is known as the Offer of an interview.)

To secure an interview for this role, you must meet the minimum criteria, all of which are assessed at the application sift. These criteria (in order of application process) are:

• Demonstrate ability in developing software in at least one common language (assessed at application form sift)
• Demonstrate an understanding of the principles of modern standards approaches such as continuous integration and delivery, test driven development and cloud services (assessed at application form sift)
• Demonstrate taking on a more senior role within a team. Provide technical direction and the ability to guide and support others with regards to software developing (assessed at application form sift)

Before you apply

To work at MI5 you need to be a British citizen or hold dual British nationality. You can read our full eligibility criteria here.

This role requires the highest security clearance, known as Developed Vetting (DV).

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. You should not discuss your application, other than with your partner or a close family member.