Lead Software Developer

About Scrumconnect Consulting

Scrumconnect Consulting is a multi-award-winning digital consultancy, recognised for delivering impactful and innovative technology solutions across UK government departments. Our work has positively influenced the lives of over 40 million UK citizens.

We are passionate about user-centred design, agile delivery, and building digital services that make a real difference. Our teams work at the forefront of innovation, helping organisations transform and deliver high-quality, scalable solutions that truly matter.

Overview

We are looking for a Lead Software Developer to design, build, and maintain high-quality software to help UK government clients solve problems and deliver value for citizens and the public sector.

You will work as part of a multidisciplinary agile team, delivering user-centred digital services that meet Government Digital Service (GDS) standards and accessibility requirements.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role operating within structured and governed environments where security, performance, accessibility, reliability, and scalability are critical to service success.

The role will support the development of a modern digital system that enables secure, reliable, and efficient processing and exchange of information between government services and external organisations, helping to provide customers with a seamless experience across digital and other service channels.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead development across one or a small number of related teams.

• Provide technical leadership across the design, development, testing, deployment, and operation of Spring Boot services.

• Guide teams on engineering practices, ways of working, coding standards, quality, and maintainability.

• Provide technical leadership on Spring Data JPA, including entity mapping, relationships, repository design, lazy/eager loading considerations, auditing, transaction management, and code reviews.

• Lead the implementation of robust data access layers and scalable Spring Boot services.

• Lead the integration of modern Java services with legacy SOAP/XML systems, including the use of appropriate integration patterns such as the Strangler Fig pattern.

• Make architectural and build-vs-buy decisions in collaboration with the Technical Architect.

• Identify appropriate tooling, frameworks, and technical approaches across a wide range of systems.

• Lead performance optimisation activities, including database query tuning and optimisation of application-level caching using existing framework capabilities.

• Oversee the design, monitoring, and optimisation of overnight batch jobs and high-volume transactional processing.

• Provide technical leadership, coaching, mentoring, and knowledge sharing across the engagement.

• Contribute to the Scrumconnect developer community and promote the adoption of good engineering practices.

• Act as a senior on-call responder, supporting incident management and driving long-term resilience and reliability improvements.

• Collaborate with product managers, designers, architects, developers, testers, and other stakeholders to deliver user-focused digital services.

Required Skills & Experience

You'll be working with:

• Java 21

• Spring Boot

• Spring Data JPA

• PostgreSQL / Amazon RDS PostgreSQL

• AWS, including EKS, RDS, SQS, SNS, and S3

• Terraform

• GitHub Actions

• Splunk

• Grafana

• SOAP/XML-based integrations

• Jira

• Confluence

• Bitbucket

We're looking for:

• Strong experience designing, building, and operating production software systems using Java and Spring Boot.

• Strong practical experience with Spring Data JPA, including ORM mapping, entity relationships, repositories, auditing, transaction management, and performance considerations around lazy and eager loading.

• Experience designing and developing robust data access layers for enterprise applications.

• Experience integrating modern Java/Spring Boot services with legacy SOAP/XML systems.

• Understanding and practical experience of integration and modernisation approaches such as the Strangler Fig pattern.

• Strong experience working with AWS cloud-native services, particularly EKS, RDS PostgreSQL, SQS, SNS, and S3.

• Experience optimising application performance using existing framework capabilities without unnecessarily introducing additional technologies.

• Experience with database performance tuning, query optimisation, and high-volume transactional processing.

• Experience overseeing and optimising batch processing, including overnight batch jobs.

• Confident with modern development standards, including test-driven development, continuous integration/continuous deployment, and code review.

• Strong understanding of information security principles and secure-by-default engineering.

• Experience with systems design and integration in complex environments.

• Comfortable supporting services in production, including on-call participation, incident response, troubleshooting, and observability.

• Experience using development and collaboration tools such as Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket.

• User-focused mindset and experience collaborating with designers and product colleagues.

• Experience working in agile or hybrid delivery models, such as Scrum and Kanban.

• Experience working on high-volume transactional digital services, or strong evidence that you can ramp up quickly in such environments.

• Demonstrable experience providing technical leadership, mentoring developers, conducting code reviews, and driving engineering best practices across teams.

Desirable Experience

• Domain knowledge of UK tax administration.

• Experience in regulated public-sector or financial-services environments.

• Experience working with legacy system modernisation and service migration strategies.

• Open-source contributions to government engineering ecosystems.

• Active community-of-practice contribution, such as talks, blog posts, or internal teaching.

How We Work

It is our mission to make digital easy - through intelligent systems that predict needs, automate complexity, and drive measurable value for the citizens and organisations we serve.

Our Values

Collaboration

Create Value Early

Integrity

Commitment

Diversity and Inclusion

At Scrumconnect Consulting, we believe that diversity drives innovation and better outcomes. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where every individual is valued, respected, and supported.

We welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds and actively encourage individuals from underrepresented groups, including women, people with disabilities, and diverse communities, as well as those seeking flexible working arrangements.

As a Disability Confident Level 1 employer, we are committed to providing reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process and during employment to ensure equal opportunities for all.

How to Apply

Please submit your CV. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to interview.

This role requires SC (Security Check) clearance. Please flag in your application if you already hold SC clearance.