HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is building a modern, digital tax administration and runs the biggest digital operation in Government, providing digital services for 45 million individuals and 4.9 million business customers. Our digital programme is multi-award winning and the envy of other government organisations.

The Chief Digital & Information Group (CDIO) are responsible for building and running HMRC IT services along with providing IT change and operational support. We’re increasingly delivering in-house through our growing network of digital delivery centres – hi-tech, state-of-the-art facilities across the UK.

This is a great opportunity to join HMRC’s IT function (CDIO) which sets the technology direction for HMRC as well as a chance to make a real difference to people’s lives by delivering class leading digital products.

The Customs and International Trade Delivery Group (C&IT) are responsible for the end to end service management and development of over 100 separate services from the generation of Trade Statistics, to the administration of Customs and Excise duties.

This is an exciting and challenging role as a key member of the delivery team, collaborating with partners throughout the full delivery lifecycle to ensure delivery and support of highest-quality software products.

We follow a test-first methodology, and our developers are passionate about Test Driven Delivery, working closely with business analysts, testers and product owners within a truly collaborative environment.

The Role

As a software developer you will design, run and improve software that meets user needs. Responsible for writing clean, secure code following a test-driven approach you will create code that is open by default and easy for others to reuse.

You will demonstrate a rational and organised approach to the tasks undertaken and an awareness of the need to achieve quality whilst taking a logical, analytical approach to problem solving.

You will also be confident in coaching and mentoring more junior colleagues.

As the ideal candidate you will already have a strong appreciation of information security and be confident designing solutions and services with security controls embedded.

You can understand and identify users, engage with key partners to collate evidence and define research which fits their needs. You put users first and use quantitative and qualitative data turn user focus into outcomes.

Key Responsibilities:

• Designing and building complex programs and program modifications from supplied specifications, using agreed standards and tools, to achieve a well-engineered result.

• Creating, amending and tracking of programs in accordance with the design.

• Planning, designing and conducting tests of programs; correcting errors and re-tests to achieve an error-free result.

• Managing competing priorities and documenting all work in accordance with agreed standards.

• Conducting reviews of supplied specifications, with others as appropriate.

• Takes part in reviews of own work and the work of colleagues.

• Defining the software modules that comprise an integration build and produces a build definition for generation of the software.

• Carrying out fault diagnosis relating to complex problems, reporting the results of such diagnosis in a clear and concise manner.

• Translate user stories and propose design approaches services to meet user needs, and engage in meaningful interactions and relationships to deliver these.

• Maintaining the security, confidentiality and integrity of information systems through compliance with relevant legislation and regulations. Designing, implementing and operating controls and management strategies to allow this.

Essential Criteria:

• Educated to bachelor degree level or can demonstrate equivalent work-based experience.
• Able to design and build moderately complex programs using agreed standards and tools, to achieve a well-engineered result.
• Previous software development experience.
• Reasonable proficiency in full stack development using Java 8, Spring eco system, Apache and other popular open source Java libraries.
• Good knowledge of RDBMS system like Oracle, MySQL (MongoDB is advantageous).
• Understanding of microservice design and development.
• Reasonable proficiency in development tools: Java IDE, Git, Jenkins.
• Knowledge of Webservice development with both SOAP and RESTful APIs.
• Experience or understanding of Test Driven Development (TDD).

Desirable Criteria:

• Understanding of Behavioral Driven Development (BDD).
• Working knowledge of unix-like operating systems such as Linux.


Your permanent location and place of work will be in the Edinburgh regional centre. However, for training purposes the post will be on detached duty in Alexander House Southend for a period of (up to) 2 months before taking up your permanent post at the Edinburgh Regional Centre.

For the first nine months after taking up duty, the post holder will work normal office hours though will be required to occasionally attend the office outside of normal working hours (for example to support software releases). For the next three months the post holder will continue to work normal office hours and on a ad-hoc basis shadow a colleague already providing on-call support. On completion of 12 months in post, the post holder will then be required to provide part of a 24/7 on-call Rota.

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension