Job vacancy: Senior Developer, NHS England, Nationally

Job summary

Main area

Administration

Grade

NHS AfC: Band 8a

Contract

Fixed term: 12 months (Until 31/10/2026 - Secondment only for current NHS employees)

Hours

Full time
Job share
Flexible working

37.5 hours per week

Job ref

990-TD-P&P-17532-E

Employer: NHS England
Employer type: NHS
Site: Any NHSE Office
Town: Nationally
Salary: £55,690 - £62,682 per annum (excluding London weighting)
Salary period: Yearly
Closing: 07/10/2025 23:59

Senior Developer

NHS AfC: Band 8a

Our Organisation

The NHS is building a culture that is positive, compassionate and inclusive – and we all have our part to play.

As employers we are committed to protecting and promoting the physical and mental health and wellbeing of all our colleagues. This underpins our values as set out in the NHS Constitution and supports us to be an Employer of Choice, while helping our colleagues to deliver high quality services for our patients and communities.

As a flexible employer, we want to support you to work in a way that is best for the NHS, our patients and you. Talk to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s a job share, part time, hybrid working or another flexible pattern. In addition, although the role advertised may have a ‘home’ office base indicated, we remain committed to supporting flexibility around workplace locations. If it works for the service, we will do our best to make it work for you.

We are an accredited Living Wage Employer which means that every colleague working for our organisation and third-party contractors will earn a real Living Wage. We are one of over 15,000 organisations, who voluntarily chose to pay the real Living Wage.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please note that the reason for the fixed term of this contract is - Short-term vacancy.

Earlier this year the Government announced that NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care will increasingly merge functions, ultimately leading to NHS England being fully integrated into the Department. The purpose of this change is to create a smaller, more strategic centre which will reduce duplication and eliminate waste.

You can find further details about the role, including key responsibilities and accountabilities, alongside the organisational structure and person specification in the attached Job Description and other supporting documents.

Secondments

Applicants from within the NHS will be offered on a secondment basis only, agreement should be obtained from their employer prior to submitting the application.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

Degree or equivalent experience

Experience

Essential criteria

Leadership - Proven experience of technically leading a software development team, solving complex enterprise problems, developing such capabilities within teams and through the coordination of external suppliers.
Innovation - Ability to experiment with new technologies to assess their fit to specific business problems and implements their adoption within a specific solution. Experience in identifying opportunities to leverage or adapt existing technologies to provide the best customer outcomes. Communicating best practice within own and neighbouring teams. Demonstrable understanding of specific application components of software development and proven ability to proactively spot potential issues and take actions to resolve.
Adaptability - Experience and ability to adopt and adapt appropriate system design methods, tools and techniques to ensure they are applied effectively for successful deliveries. Experience in providing alternative solution approaches to deliver comparable capabilities with associated expressions of cost, risk, timescales to support evidence-based decisions. Proven experience in facilitating a learning culture in a collaborative team setting which values patterns and practices over specific technology implementations. Experience in driving adoption and acquisition of new skills in teams when working with new technologies.
Technical - Experience of developing a large or complex system requiring the introduction of new or optimised exploitation of existing technologies. Identifies and articulates best use patterns for working with appropriately selected technologies to meet business problems. Experience in software architecture, design and development with an understanding of a range of platforms, languages, methodologies, patterns and implementations.

Knowledge and skills

Essential criteria

Significant knowledge in software development, architecture and design with experience of appropriate and representative languages, frameworks, platforms and tools; including knowledge of software delivery methodologies, information processing & standards, security, infrastructure and information governance.
Knowledge of delivering and operating end-to-end from writing code to operating / maintaining, and continuous improvement.

Our commitments to you

We are passionate about creating an inclusive workplace that promotes and values diversity. We know that different ideas, perspectives and backgrounds create a stronger and more creative work environment that delivers better patient outcomes. We strive to ensure our people feel trusted, valued and empowered. We’re passionate about nurturing and developing people. When you join us, we want you to grow and excel, and we offer many opportunities for you to do that. We welcome your talent and enthusiasm irrespective of age, disability, neuro-divergence, sex, gender identity and gender expression, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or other personal circumstances. We have policies and procedures to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process, including the consideration of reasonable adjustments for people who have a disability and/or who are neuro-divergent.

We welcome applications from disabled candidates. If you meet all the essential criteria, you will be guaranteed an interview.

Your application is your opportunity to demonstrate to us how you meet the requirements of the role. Whilst we appreciate that you may have had support with your application (e.g., using AI technology or guidance from a trusted individual), it’s important that the information contained within your application reflects your own knowledge, skill, and experience and we trust that you apply on that basis.

If applying for this role on a secondment basis, please make sure you have obtained prior agreement from your current line manager to apply for this position.

Please note that we currently do not accept applications via recruitment agencies.

To comply with the HM Government Functional Standard GovS 007, and specifically the Personnel Security Standards 2024, individuals employed or contracted by NHS England may be required to undergo a Baseline Personnel Security Standards check, dependent on the role.

The NHS Business Services Authority is responsible for the processing of your application; a privacy notice is attached to advise you on how we will process your personal data.

If you have applied via NHS Jobs, your submitted application will be imported into our preferred third-party recruitment system. All subsequent information regarding your application will be generated from apps.trac.jobs. If you are appointed to a post, information will also be transferred into the NHS Electronic Staff Records system.

You will not be able to track the progress of your application or receive messages through NHS Jobs, and furthermore, as an employer, we will not be able to respond to any emails sent to us via NHS Jobs. If you have a query relating to your application, please contact the recruitment team on [email protected] or 0300 330 1369. You can view our Privacy Notice here.

NHS England