I confess, I rather shared Steph Gray’s astonishment to see that GDS’s appetite for fresh developer blood continues unabated.
It’s a little unhelpfully presented on the Civil Service jobs site, but I’ve since had it confirmed that they are currently recruiting a total of 22 developers at Grades 6 and 7 level. (Not, as you’d almost certainly assume by reading it, 22 at each.)
For those outside the Civil Service, Grade 6 equates to an Army Colonel. At that level, you’d normally expect to be managing quite a decent number of human beings… which in my experience, are a lot more temperamental than servers.
You’ve got a week to get your application together, if you’re attracted by the prospect of a £73,000 salary package for a 36 hour working week. Which of course you would be, if you’re even remotely qualified.
I shudder to think what this is doing to ‘the market rate’ for IT jobs elsewhere in Whitehall.
And I wonder where these devs are going to go, in their next step up the career ladder. It can’t possibly be within government, without taking a significant pay cut… or a huge step-up in responsibility.
It’s quite agonising, by the way, to see that GDS have felt the need to write a blog post explaining how to search that Civil Service site, and download the appropriate files. An indication of just how work needs to be done; and therefore, perhaps, some kind of screening process? ‘This is what you’re up against…’
6 thoughts on “GDS needs more devs, offers more money”
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I rather suspect that the “up to” is a critically important bit of text in that ad!
I would like to to clarify that we have been recruiting a maximum of 26 developers to work on all parts of gov.uk. We have not yet reached that target and these are readverts of posts that remain unfilled. These are not 22 new developers that are being recruited in addition to those already advertised. The current status of the recruitment programme is that we have hired four new developers and there are another 3 we are discussing terms with.
I know it will be a long term project but it looks like it could be really fulfilling for the developers involved.
The two year fixed contracts are great for younger candidates. Perhaps designed to discourage old lags with useful(?) experience?
Thanks for that clarification Tony; much appreciated.
At least this time around candidates will not have to deal with retained recruitment consultants lying through their teeth along with the miserable online assessment in all its mistake laden glory. As Tony will remember from the last massive recruitment drive in 2009 (wonder how much it cost to pay them all off?) one of the largest problems was getting candidates all the way through the long and arduous process without finding a job elsewhere. Six months is a long time to go from application to first day, particularly for in demand developers.