Senior Backend Engineer

Help build and operate reliable, scalable and secure digital services that support UK businesses and trade . Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST), in partnership with Inspire People, is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer. Whilst the team primarily develops in Python, we welcome applications from experienced backend developers with Java, C#, Go or similar object-oriented programming backgrounds, with experience designing, operating and improving distributed systems. This permanent Grade 7 role can be based in London, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham or Salford, with hybrid working of 2-3 days per week in the office, flexible working options and a salary of £63,824 to £80,158 (up to £83,778 for London), including allowances, dependent on location and technical skills assessed at interview.

Build Reliable Digital Services at BIST
BIST's Digital, Data and Technology directorate develops and operates the tools and services that support the organisation's mission. As part of a multidisciplinary agile team, you will design, build and run platform services that underpin critical digital products, helping development teams improve observability, monitoring, CI/CD and service resilience.

As a Senior Backend Engineer (Site Reliability), you will:

• Design, build and operate reliable, secure and scalable cloud platform services supporting critical digital products.
• Develop and maintain platform tooling, automation, observability, monitoring and CI/CD capabilities.
• Build software solutions using Python and modern engineering practices.
• Write clean, maintainable code and infrastructure-as-code solutions to support service delivery.
• Embed Site Reliability Engineering principles including SLIs, SLOs, error budgets and continual service improvement.
• Support live service operations, incident management, troubleshooting and platform resilience.
• Collaborate with engineers, architects, product teams and stakeholders whilst coaching and mentoring colleagues.

Essential Skills for the Senior Backend Engineer (Site Reliability) include:

• Experience writing clean, maintainable code in at least one programming language.
• Experience designing, operating and improving distributed systems, focusing on reliability, performance and user outcomes.
• Experience building and supporting applications in containerised environments.
• Knowledge of Linux/Unix fundamentals and TCP/IP networking.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to build effective relationships across technical and non-technical teams.

Desirable Skills:

• Python and Django
• AWS and Azure
• Terraform
• Docker, ECS and ECR
• PostgreSQL (Amazon RDS)
• Redis / ElastiCache
• GitHub Actions, CodePipeline and CodeBuild
• Elasticsearch / OpenSearch
• Datadog and Logstash

In return, you can expect a flexible working culture, including:

• Hybrid working with 2-3 days per week in the office.
• Full-time, part-time and flexible working options.
• Learning and development tailored to your role.
• Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%.
• 25 days annual leave, rising to 30 days with service.
• Three paid volunteering days each year.
• Inclusive and diverse working culture.
• Employee benefits programme including Cycle to Work.

Why Join BIST?

This is an opportunity to help shape the reliability, security and performance of critical digital services while scaling BIST's global platform and strengthening engineering practices across the organisation. The Digital, Data and Technology team was nominated four consecutive times for Best Public Sector Employer at the Women in Tech Employer Awards and won the award in 2025.

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