backend developer for critical national infrastructure

Leidos supports a central government customer and contributes to the current and future iterations of critical national infrastructure.

• Provide technical leadership for the software team, collaborate with architects on solution approaches, guide implementation, and make engineering decisions that balance delivery, quality, and operational risk
• Apply agreed standards and processes consistently across delivery and engineering practices throughout the project lifecycle
• Develop, debug, test, document, and deploy software enhancements aligned with the Software Development Strategy
• Lead delivery of Java-based backend services and APIs that process business events and workflows and integrate with downstream systems and data services in a secure, highly available environment
• Drive strong engineering practices across the team
• Ensure adherence to code review standards and project quality gates
• Promote clean, maintainable, well-documented code
• Guide system design and development by analysing information needs, system flows, data usage, and work processes, and translating them into practical implementation approaches
• Own technical oversight of the build and deployment pipeline, ensuring it is continuously validated and fit for purpose; work with engineers and supporting roles to meet CI/CD, quality gate, and security scanning requirements
• Evaluate requests, requirements, problem definitions, solution options, and their impact on operational systems to determine operational feasibility
• Lead engineers and collaborate with architects and the test team to ensure new and modified software is fully verified before promotion
• Break down designs into workable, reportable tasks for incremental delivery in a Scrum/Agile manner
• Oversee and enable project test automation; ensure engineers deliver unit and integration tests as part of development, and support and coordinate automation activities while the test team retains ownership of overall outcomes
• Support and continuously improve Agile delivery practices, including planning, estimation, backlog refinement, and delivery cadence
• Ensure effective use of development tooling and processes, including CI/CD pipelines and integrated security scanning
• Mentor and support engineers to raise technical capability and consistency across the team
• Communicate effectively with internal stakeholders and influence technical decisions with clear, concise, well-reasoned input

• Extensive software engineering experience, including substantial hands-on delivery with Java 8 and modern Java versions such as 17 and 21, and API design and implementation
• Proven experience as a technical leader, including leading technical decision-making, guiding and mentoring engineers, and representing the software team in customer and stakeholder engagements
• Strong understanding of design patterns and a structured approach to software development
• Strong understanding of Git/Bitbucket branching strategies on large projects with moderately sized teams
• Familiarity with relational databases (PostgresSQL), SQL, and JDBC
• Experience writing unit and integration tests as a normal part of delivery
• Familiarity with Agile software development and iterative delivery models
• Familiarity with the Atlassian tool suite (e.g. Jira, Bitbucket, Bamboo) or equivalent tooling, and a solid understanding of CI/CD concepts, workflows, and practices
• Experience ensuring compliance with code review standards, quality gates, CI/CD pipelines, and security scanning processes
• Able to clearly communicate status, risks, trade-offs, and technical recommendations and represent the software team in technical discussions and reviews
• Must hold and maintain UK Security Clearance and additional programme clearances
• Будет плюсом: integration and architectural patterns (e.g. adapters, saga orchestration), SOAP, REST web services, IBM Web Application Server or JBoss, Unix/Linux or other variants, Perl/Python/bash scripting, C/C++, performance debugging, contributing to or supporting UI and/or API test automation initiatives

• 33 Days annual leave, including public and privilege holidays
• Contributory Pension Scheme
• Private Medical Insurance
• Flexible benefits, including life assurance, health schemes, gym memberships, annual buy and sell holidays, and a cycle to work scheme
• Flexi-Time Working