My attention has again been drawn to the Civil Service jobs website, and the latest vacancies being offered within the Cabinet Office – and specifically, the Government Digital Service. They’re looking for, among others:
- 7 ‘interaction designers’, on salary packages ‘up to £97,500 per annum’
- 2 ‘creative leads’, ‘up to £111,000 per annum’
- 4 ‘web ops’, ‘up to £73,000 per annum’
- a ‘Delivery Team Manager’, ‘up to £97,500 per annum’
- 3 ‘technical architects’, ‘up to £97,500 per annum’and… brace yourself…
- 22 developers, ‘up to £73,000 per annum’
Some of these labels are familiar: for example, I blogged back in October about a previous round of vacancies, which included:
- Two creative leads, £80k
- Two technical architects, £90k
- 12 developer positions, £65k
- Two ‘web ops’, £65k
- A delivery team manager, £85k
- Three interaction designers, £59k
Increased demand, with across-the-board salary increases? Or perhaps they weren’t offering quite enough last time to fill those previously advertised vacancies? Who knows.
Update: Confirmation from GDS’s Tony Singleton – ‘We did not fill all the posts advertised in October so are readvertising those along with additional ones.’
For the record, that current round of vacancies has a potential total just short of £3.2 million; and that’s before overheads, NI, etc etc.
There are also some slightly less glamorous positions, such as an Internal Network Manager and Internal Network Administrator, both on £29-38k. But these are permanent, where the others are Fixed Term.
Closing dates on all of these, if you’re interested, is 11 January; and they are all open to external candidates. Something to keep you occupied over Christmas, maybe.
Responses
This only makes sense if you believe we’re better off with government supersites and centralised hierarchies based in London. The organisations that provide public services need their own web teams, with the powers to build effective web services on dedicated sites. The experience we had with Directgov was that all the IT resources went into servicing their supersite, with nothing left over for innovations. Unless you count COTA boxes as an innovation.
Why should the DVLA, based in Cardiff, have to use IT staff on the other side of the country? It’s a lot more difficult and expensive than having someone who develops web services sitting in your own office. Having a rotating cast of hired staff undermines public services as well.
The new philosophy is entirely based on a supersite (singular) and a centralised London-based hierarchy; I’m afraid that horse bolted a long time ago, so there’s no point worrying about whether or not the stable door should be open.
In their defence, I understand they’ve established a principle of sending key staff to work on-site with the flagship services.
But I totally agree with your point about maintaining the momentum of innovation. They’ll be doing well to keep that hungry startup ethos, once they’ve assembled an army of developers all earning £50,000+.
If candidates wait another couple of months will they get paid even more?
Yeah, I must admit, that struck me too. Recruitment as a game of Deal Or No Deal? It’s certainly innovative. And I’d hate to be one of the ones who ‘dealt’ too early.
Cheers Simon; I have to wonder how long the philosophy will last for if these expensive hired guns don’t deliver a revolution after all.
I missed this post with Christmas and all. Interesting to see the Team Delivery Manager pays £7.5k more than the SCS1 Head of Digital role at MoJ that was advertised with a closing date of 20th December at £90k.
And the x2 creative leads are offered just £9k less than the deputy CIO for government role currently advertised on Civil Service jobs at £111k.
Talk about inflating London digital salaries!