Senior Developer

We're looking for four exceptional Senior Developer to help us make a difference to our planet.

Your world of expertise

These four roles will be deployed to our Defence and Transport Teams to support their work.

Two roles will be part of the Defence Capability Programme which encompasses the science and technology required to deliver the data and tools to customers in the Defence sector for civil and military application around the world.

The Transport teams are working to deliver next generation products and services that support the Global Aviation Industry. The two roles will be part of the Aviation Services Programme, leading teams working on exceptional science and technology solutions.

Defence Data Services:

As a Senior Developer in our Defence Data Services , you will create systems which bridge the gap between our front-end products and the back-end science, ensuring that we are able to make the very best use of our ever-evolving supercomputer capability.

This is an exciting opportunity to work in a development team that has a wide-reaching and positive impact, helping people to stay safe and thrive around the globe.

You will work with your team to understand, design, and implement modern, full stack, cloud-based solutions. We also use Java for some services. You will also work collaboratively with your peers in the Science and Technology community, building relationships and sharing your knowledge.

Defence Visualisations:

As a Senior Developer in Defence Visualisations, you will help develop tools that allow users to view a range of weather and marine data in ways that allow them to make better decisions, keeping individuals safe.

You will work with your team to understand, design and implement a range of visualisation tools to meet the needs of our customers. These deployments are configured and deployed to a range of public and private cloud environments to best meet the performance, availability and resilience needs of each use case.

This is an exciting opportunity to work in a development team whose work delivers impact around the globe for its users.

Transport Services:

This is a fantastic time to join Transport! As a Senior Developer in Transport, you will lead the development on related stories implementing a range of technologies and novel solutions. Using Python, AWS cloud infrastructure and serverless technologies, you will create highly available services for the Aviation Industry. These services have global impact and enable safety critical decision making across the UK and the Globe.

As a Tribe we embrace technical curiosity, you will be encouraged to explore new technologies and sponsor their adoption within the tribe. Following successful trials, we have recently adopted HTMX and Terraform into our technology stack.

We operate the services we build and embrace DevOps practices and philosophies, continually improving the resilience and stability of our services.

World changing work

From science to technology, from meteorology to management, and from planning to communication, our expertise helps us stand out as the authority on weather accuracy and climate prediction. We help individuals, industries and government to make better decisions to stay safe and thrive. This is the Met Office. This is who we are.

• We're a force for good - focusing on our environmental and social impact

• We're experts by nature - always learning and developing to do things better

• We live and breathe it - putting our purpose at the heart of decision-making

• We're better together - understanding partnerships and inclusivity make us greater

• We keep evolving - pushing boundaries to make tomorrow better for our customers

  Your key duties

  • Leading agile development projects

  • Plan and lead development of sets of related user stories

  • Find ways to improve system robustness, resilience and stability

  • Designing, coding, testing, and documenting software solutions

  • Mentoring and coaching junior developers

  • Collaborating with other disciplines, to fully understand the required development

    Why join us

    Our work is life-changing, often life-saving and always life-enhancing. The Met Office is accredited as a 'Great Place to Work UK 2023' and in addition has achieved a place on both the UK's 'Best Workplaces in Tech' and 'Best Workplaces for Women' lists.

    As our Senior Developer, your total reward package will be up to £62,939 annually, which includes:

    • £41,725 base pay

    • An outstanding Civil Service pension, with an average employer contribution of 27%

    • Recruitment Retention Allowance (RRA) you will be paid £5,300 per annum as a market supplement to reflect the demand for your skills. Whilst in post, you will be paid this market driven allowance from April 2024 until September 2025 in your monthly pay

    • Annual Leave starting at 27.5 days (plus Bank Holidays) rising to 32.5 days (plus Bank Holidays) after 5 years and option to buy or sell up to 5 days per year of annual leave

      Our people are at the heart of what we do and we'll do our best to agree a working pattern that works for everyone.

      This opportunity is full time, 37 hours per week, but we would also consider applicants wishing to work a minimum of 30 hours per week

      Additionally, the job may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in the office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and the location advertised will be your contractual place of work.

      Essential Criteria:

      1. Programming and build (software engineering). You can collaborate with others when necessary to review specifications. You can use the agreed specifications to design, code, test and document programs or scripts of medium-to-high complexity, using modern standard technologies including Python and/ or Java. (Expert by nature)

      2. Systems Design, Integration and Service Support: You can design and review cost efficient systems using design standards, methods tools, and ensure they are applied effectively. you can identify risk, impact. You can apply efficient use of resources and integration of multiple systems and technology. You can define the integration build; co-ordinate build activities across systems to undertake and support integration testing activities. You can identify, locate and fix faults. (We live and breathe it)

      3. User focus. You can collaborate with user researchers and can represent users internally. Explain the difference between user needs and the desires of the user. Champion user research to focus on all users. Prioritise and define approaches to understand the user story, guiding others in doing so. Offer recommendations on the best tools and methods to use.

      4. Information Security: You can understand information security, design solutions and services with security controls embedded, specifically engineered with mitigation of security threats as a core feature.

      5. Team Membership: You approach your work as a team activity, actively working with others across multi discipline and geographically dispersed teams. You can share your expertise with others in the team as needed including mentoring and coaching junior members. When needed to deputise a team and ensure that work is done to the highest quality and in a timely manner.

         How to apply

         If you share our values, we'd love to hear from you! Click apply to begin your application. Please complete your career history and provide evidence against each of the essential criteria in the supporting statement questionnaire.

         We recommend candidates use the CARL (Context, Action, Result and Learning) method the help best demonstrate your experience and skills. When providing examples, you should include the context of the example, The action you took, what the result was and any learning you took from this example.

         We suggest 300 to 500 words per answer to keep your response focused and impactful.

         Closing date 03/ 11/ 24 at 23:59 with first stage interviews commencing from 11/ 11/ 24. You will hear from us once the closing date has passed.

         How we can help

         If you would like to better understand the organisation, the role or have any questions please contact us at .

         If you're considering applying and need support to do so, please get in touch. You can request adjustments either within your application or by contacting us. Should you be offered an interview, please be aware there may be a selection exercise which could include a presentation, written test or a scenario-based activity. You can select in your application to be considered under the Disability Confident Scheme. To be invited to interview/ assessment under this scheme, your application must meet the essential criteria for the role.

         We understand that great minds don't always think alike and as an equal opportunities employer we welcome applications from those with all protected characteristics. We recruit on merit, fairness, and open competition in line with the Civil Service Code.

         We can only accept applications from those eligible to live and work in the UK - please refer to GOV.UK for information. We require Security clearance, for which you need to have resided in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years to be eligible. You will need to achieve full security clearance within your first 6 months with us.