To be considered please apply on Essex County Councils careers site via the following link https://workingforessex.com/apply/lead-developer-24092?&source=Indeed

The Role

The Lead Developer is a newly created role within Essex Digital Service, established to define and deliver the Council’s development strategy, build internal engineering capability, and enable scalable delivery in support of the Resident Experience Programme. Working on a range of transformational projects, the successful candidate will play a key role in improving how residents interact with the Council while shaping the future direction of the Council’s digital services.

The postholder will provide technical leadership across product teams, setting the technical direction for the Council’s new low-code platform and ensuring software solutions are designed and delivered securely, sustainably, and in line with user needs, organisational priorities, and long-term platform strategy.

As a senior technical leader, the Lead Developer will influence wider digital and technology investment decisions through technical assurance and strategic advice, supporting the Assistant Director for Product & Delivery with technical investment decisions and budgetary responsibilities of up to £500,000.

The role will directly manage a team of developers and be responsible for building and strengthening engineering capability across Essex Digital Service. With significant influence across major transformation programmes, the postholder will help shape council-wide engineering standards, practices, and technical capability.

To read more about our business area, please visit: Corporate Services

Accountabilities

• Develop and deliver the Essex Digital Service development strategy, aligning engineering capabilities with product, platform and architectural priorities to enable the delivery of secure and user-centred digital services.
• Establish and maintain engineering standards, design patterns and ways of working to promote consistency, enable reuse of common components, and accelerate the adoption of platform-based delivery approaches.
• Provide technical leadership across strategic programmes in order to ensure that solutions are scalable, sustainable and aligned to organisational outcomes.
• Lead the design, development and continuous improvement of software, services, APIs and integrations in order to deliver reliable, high-performing and maintainable digital products.
• Collaborate with Product and Delivery Managers to align engineering decisions with user needs, service priorities and measurable programme outcomes
• Lead, mentor and develop engineering teams to build capability, foster professional growth and create a high-performing engineering culture.
• Set and assure coding, testing, accessibility and service quality standards to improve delivery confidence, reduce technical debt and ensure compliance.
• Drive the adoption of modern engineering practices, including DevOps, CI/CD, automation and cloud-native approaches, to increase delivery speed, quality and resilience.
• Identify, manage and mitigate technical risks while working with internal stakeholders and suppliers to deliver secure, coherent and cost-effective digital solutions.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Degree-level qualification, or equivalent professional experience, supported by evidence of continuous professional development and demonstrated capability aligned to SFIA Level 6 software engineering leadership.
• Significant experience delivering digital services in complex organisations.
• Proven experience leading engineering teams and building capability.
• Strong experience of Agile delivery in complex environments.
• Expertise in modern programming languages, software design and architecture.
• Experience defining engineering standards and development strategies.
• Provides evidence of applying Government Service Standards, accessibility best practice, and information governance policies, with no significant compliance breaches.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

Once you’ve secured your role within Essex County Council you will receive many great employee benefits, including support for unpaid carers and flexible working arrangements to accommodate their needs.

At Essex County Council, we value integrity and ethical behaviour. We kindly ask that you embrace our code of conduct and the Nolan principles, including throughout the recruitment process. Your commitment to these standards helps us maintain a positive and respectful workplace for everyone.

Pay: £60,724.00-£71,440.00 per year

Benefits:

• Company pension
• Cycle to work scheme
• Employee discount
• Health & wellbeing programme
• Work from home

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Chelmsford CM1 1QH