Software Engineer

Job Description

JOB SUMMARY

The Scottish Public Pensions Agency is an agency of the Scottish Government. Our primary responsibility is to administer pensions for National Health Service, Teachers’, Police, and Firefighters’ pension systems in Scotland. The Agency administers these public service pension systems on behalf of Scottish Ministers, spending more than £2.5 billion each year on pensions for over 200,000 retirees.

We are looking for a skilled Senior Python Software Engineer to join our team and oversee the development and maintenance of new software for our pension administration service. This position offers an excellent opportunity to be at the forefront of better services for Scottish public sector employees. The job entails creating, developing, and optimising Python-based programmes for pension administration, award computations, contributions, benefits, and predictions. You will have a software engineering background, Python programming knowledge, and a solid understanding of difficult numerical calculations.

As a Software Engineer, you will have extensive experience in software development and a strong commitment to producing high-quality work on a consistent basis. This will entail being involved in the effective design and development of applications, APIs, and other elements. You will work as part of a small team to ensure that high-profile work programmes are completed successfully.

A developer provides software components that are part of a product. At this level, you will: construct software to fulfil user needs, adhere to best practice guidelines and contribute to their improvement, write clean, secure, and well-tested code, coach and mentor more junior colleagues, and operate the services you build and spot issues in production.

This position includes a £5000 Digital, Data, and Technology (DDaT) pay increase after a three-month DDaT competency qualifying period. Pay supplements are temporary payments designed to solve recruiting and retention challenges caused by market pressures, and they are subject to periodic review. This position is part of the Scottish Government’s DDaT team. As a member of the profession, you will participate in the professional development system, which is now known as BCS RoleModelplus.

Responsibilities

Manage service components to ensure that they satisfy business goals and performance targets, assist with specific efforts to improve development processes, and detect obvious flaws in development processes. Assist in the repair of problems in accordance with established processes, as well as the completion of infrastructure maintenance duties.

Participate in the information security process by designing and implementing embedded security controls in solutions and services, successfully using modern standards, and guiding others in doing so.

Collaborate with others to review requirements as needed, and then utilise the agreed-upon specifications to design, develop, test, and document medium-to-high complexity programmes or scripts using the appropriate standards and tools.

Participate in team prototyping and advocate for the usage of prototypes and testing with others; create design patterns and iterate them using a variety of prototyping approaches, selecting the most relevant one.

Translate logical designs into physical designs; create detailed designs; and efficiently record all work using the necessary standards, methodologies, and technologies, including prototyping tools as needed.

Design systems with reasonable levels of risk, manageable business and technological complexity, and meaningful impact; create and test simple system interfaces, then work on more sophisticated integration as part of a larger team.

Collaborate with user researchers, represent users inside, and promote user research to benefit all users. Prioritise and identify techniques to understanding the user story, and guide people through the process.

Apply your Python and Java programming skills to ensure the successful completion of high-profile projects, working as part of a multi-disciplinary digital team to support and inform the entire development lifecycle of new features and products, benefiting both colleagues and end users.

Competencies

Improving performance.

Analysis and Use of Evidence

Communications and Engagement

Self-Awareness

Essential Criteria and Qualifications

No special qualifications are necessary for this position.

Essential Criteria

Experience building Python programmes and scripts using agreed-upon requirements, independently designing, coding, testing, and documenting medium-high complexity programmes or scripts using the appropriate standards and tools.

Experience engineering systems using a variety of technologies and patterns, including system design, technology selection, and security control implementation.

Ability to effectively cooperate on projects to improve overall team performance while working as part of a small and agile team to achieve service requirements.

Experience taking ownership of the entire process of delivering a feature within the agreed-upon project parameters.

Interview and Assessment

Approximate timeline

Sift Date: Beginning of July

Interview Date: End of July.

Start Date: October/November

Location

This position is based in SPPA Galashiels, Tweedbank, TD1 3TE. SPPA now uses a hybrid working model. Employees are typically required to attend the office one day per week.

Minimum time in post.

Unless you are promoted to a higher Band or Grade, you will be required to stay in your current position for at least three years.

If more roles are necessary, a reserve list of successful candidates will be maintained for up to 12 months.

Sponsorship Information

Changes to legislation regarding Skilled Worker Visa Sponsorship went into effect on April 4, 2024. If you believe you may require Visa Sponsorship, you should read the official Home Office instructions before applying to ensure your eligibility. Any applicants who are not qualified for sponsorship will be withdrawn at either the application stage or the moment of offer, as would any provisional employment offer.

How to apply.

To apply for this position, you must submit the information requested below using the online application procedure.

Please send a CV explaining your relevant abilities and experience for the post (no more than two sides of A4) and a personal statement (no more than 750 words) before the closing date.

When examining how your experience relates to the role, please modify your CV and personal statement to match the role, the Essential Criteria, and the competencies listed in the job description.

Please add your personal statement into the text area provided.

Additional Information

For more details, please download and examine the “Person Specification” (found below).

Person Specification: Band B

The position is full-time, although employees with varying work schedules are encouraged to apply, and we will evaluate proposed schedules against the business requirements for this position.

To learn more about this position, contact Debbie Trafford at debbie.trafford@gov.scot.

The Scottish Government aspires to be a world-class, diverse employer where people can be themselves at work. We wish to help you reach your greatest potential regardless of the type of assessment performed. If you need any changes to our recruitment procedure, please let us know at scottishgovernmentrecruitment@gov.scot.

As part of the recruiting process, the Scottish Government and other public organisations collect and process personal information about job seekers and candidates for public jobs.

Personal information provided during the recruiting process will be made available to the Scottish Government and our supplementary data processors.