Job Advert
Band 8b: £59,539 to £64,095 per annum (pro rata)
Full Time: 37.5 hours per week (We are happy to consider applicants seeking reduced working hours – up to 30 per week)
Fixed term 36 Months
Play a key role in improving health and care for millions
We are continuing to hire during COVID-19. Our recruitment process is 100% remote and if successful you would work remotely, only working from our offices once official guidance supports this
NDS (NES Digital Service) is a fast-growing team within NHS Scotland using a modern tech stack and lean agile development practices to build and scale a new digital platform and services helping improve health & social care for millions across Scotland.
Our work is challenging, varied and hugely rewarding – NDS is a unique environment where you could help improve eye care, cancer treatment, address the impact of COVID-19 (and much more…)
We are non-hierarchical. We are truly collaborative working in cross-functional teams. We fail-forward. We iterate. We continually learn and share our knowledge.
We are proud to have attracted colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds including tech (Skyscanner, NCR, Travelnest, JP Morgan, TV Squared, CareSourcer) as well as clinical and other sectors. You can discover more about our team on our blog.
We deliver quickly… in 10 days we designed, built, and launched a complex service for people shielding during COVID lockdown ensuring access to regular food parcel deliveries and priority supermarket delivery slots.
THE OPPORTUNITY
As a Senior Software Engineer, you would be joining NDS at an exciting time working in a cloud-first environment deploying and managing the services you’ve built applying modern CI/CD, monitoring and alerting practices.
You’ll have the opportunity to work with (and maybe learn) technologies including React, Node, Java, Kubernetes, Kibana and AWS.
If you were in this role today here's some of the things you may be doing…
- Contributing to the design and development of the National Digital Platform. All our Product teams work plays a key part in evolving this
- Demoing a new feature on the eyecare service you had helped build to colleagues at our regular showcase
- Designing, deploying, and managing your own infrastructure on AWS
- Introducing a new team member to the monitoring and alerting solutions used by all our teams. Improving the documentation to cover some additional points based on the questions they asked
- Speaking with doctors for their feedback on the latest version of a service you are building together.
- Contributing to an engineering design session for a potential new service intended to help improve cancer care
- Identifying a solution to improve cloud costs and presenting this at the engineering team meeting
- Helping plan a smooth onboarding experience for a new team member joining next week
- Sharing an interesting blog with your team about how small changes can help to promote healthy and productive remote working
- Walking the dogs over lunchtime to enjoy the fresh air and come back to work fresh
- Interviewing a promising engineering candidate who had a great design interview. Maybe they could be joining soon?
DIVERSITY & INCLUSION
Developing a successful national service for Scotland is impossible without ensuring we consider the diverse needs, perspectives and backgrounds of everyone in Scotland in our work.
We are focused on hiring the very best talent available for NDS, and actively encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds and aim to ensure everyone is treated fairly, with respect and has a positive recruitment experience – regardless of the outcome.
If you are considering applying and feel it would be helpful to discuss this initially please get in touch
It’s not essential to be in a software engineering role right now. You could be returning from maternity, a career break or returning to software development after working in another field
BENEFITS WHICH MATTER
- Life-work balance - with opportunities for flexible working and remote working
- Generous NHS pension scheme
- Annual incremental salary increases (up to the maximum of the salary band) plus annual NHS salary scale review
- Annual Leave – 27 Days increasing in line with service plus 8 days public holiday
NHS discounts and more
YOUR ROLE
As a Senior Software Engineer you will play a key role in delivering valuable solutions to complex problems across health and social care.
Your responsibilities will include but are not restricted to:
- Applying software engineering best practice and suitable technologies to design, develop operate and maintain core services and products
- Designing secure, resilient, reliable, cost effective and scalable systems
- Ensuring continual improvement in software engineering, product and processes through an iterative approach to development
- Influence strategy and contribute significantly to the success of your team e.g. through mentoring, prioritisation and planning
- Helping NDS attract and hire the best talent to NDS by participating in hiring and recruitment activity as required
WHAT WE LOVE TO SEE
- Languages – While our core stack includes node.js, java, react you don’t need direct experience of these. If you’re currently working with different technologies but attracted by learning new tech we’d encourage you to apply
- Experience directly delivering, operating, and guiding others in the delivery and operation of, software solutions in a complex environment
- Expertise in fundamentals of software development including version control, continuous integration, continuous delivery, unit testing, and test-driven development
- Practical or theoretical knowledge of using cloud platforms and tools like Kubernetes to design, build and deploy functioning systems in the cloud
- Ability to work effectively with stakeholders outside the immediate team, such as clinicians in NHS Scotland and other organisations. Understanding their problems and digesting feedback on solutions you have provided.
Please note that this position is offered on a 36-month Fixed Term Contract Basis
For further information please refer to the Job Information Pack below.
For Assistance
Please contact: matthew.hill@nhs.scot