Technical Lead

Job reference: 000696

Location: London

Salary: £70,000 per annum

Employment type: Permanent

Department: Technology

Hours per week: 36.15

Interview date: TBC

Contract Duration: Not specified

Citizens Advice offers confidential advice online, over the phone, and in person, for free. Through our national network of charities, we give people the knowledge and the confidence they need to find their way forward whoever they are, and whatever their problem.

Citizens Advice are looking for a Technical Lead to join our growing team.

We particularly welcome applications from disabled and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) candidates as BAME and disabled people are currently under-represented throughout Citizens Advice. We are a member of the race equality campaign at Business in the Community, the Princes responsible business network and are committed to improving employment opportunities for ethnic minorities across the UK. We also welcome applications from, LGB and Trans and non binary candidates.

We have made a positive commitment to employing disabled people and guarantee to interview all disabled candidates who meet the minimum essential criteria for the role as set out in role profiles.

About Citizens Advice

Citizens Advice is a charity helping millions of people solve their problems. We help anyone that contacts us across a huge range of problems from managing debts, to making complaints about faulty consumer goods, from employment issues to housing problems.

As well as giving advice directly, we work to fix the underlying causes of peoples problems. We use the data and evidence gathered to advocate for changes to policy, regulation and business practices.

We build and use technology to help us do this. For example, we:

host 1,500 pages of advice on citizensadvice.org.uk which were viewed 34 million times last year.

built our own Ruby on Rails case management system to support our 30,000 staff and volunteers to help 2.6 million people face-to-face, by phone, by email or online chat.

use data science to unearth the problems that our advice cant help with, such as structural problems with Universal Credit. Our evidence led to changes in policy.

What you would be doing

You will be leading development in a project team. This includes identifying appropriate technology and approaches, deciding when software should be written, and providing technical leadership, coaching and mentoring to your team.

Our Tech Stack

We like to use Ruby, Rails, Rspec, React, Cucumber, Webpack, Sass, Docker, Jenkins and AWS. GitHub, Figma, Slack and Google Hangouts are our tools for collaborative working.

You dont need to know all of these before you join us were happy to help you learn our tech stack after you are part of the team.

Ways of working

We have made good progress since starting our journey on digital technology in earnest in 2014. Weve moved out of outsourced legacy technology contracts to build an in-house software development capability. Were broadening our digital team to focus on our wider customer journey, investing in disciplines like UX, service design, and content design. 

You will be working as part of a 120 person combined digital capability, working closely across disciplines in agile product teams.

To find out more, you can read our blog where we talk openly about the work we do.

Package

30 days holiday plus bank holidays, plus up to 5 extra days for long service

Pension with up to 6.5% contribution matching

26 weeks fully paid maternity leave, 2 weeks paid paternity & shared parental leave option (subject to leave policy)

Flexible, part-time and compressed working hours available

Interest-free season ticket loans and Cycle to Work schemes ready for when we are working in the office again

The right tools: every developer has a Macbook Pro and whatever else you need to get the job done

What we expect from you

1. Software Development: Experience in Ruby, RSpec, and accessible front end development or ability to transfer other software development skills

2. Development process optimisation: Identify process optimisation opportunities with guidance and contribute to the implementation of proposed solutions

3. Information security: Ability to design solutions and services with security controls embedded

4. Programming: Collaborate with others when necessary to review specifications. Can use these agreed specifications to design, code, test and document programs or scripts of medium to high complexity, using the right standards and tools

5. Service support: Ability to identify, locate and fix faults

6. Systems design: Ability to select appropriate design standards, methods and tools, and ensure they are applied effectively. Know how to review the systems designs of others to ensure the selection of appropriate technology, efficient use of resources and integration of multiple systems and technology

7. Systems integration: Ability to define the integration build, coordinate build activities across systems, undertake and support integration testing activities

8. User focus: Collaborate with user researchers and sell or represent users internally.

Please note, in the event of a high number of applications, we reserve the right to close the application early.