Principal Software Developer

As a Principal Developer, you will be a senior technical authority within our defence technology community, shaping how software is designed, built, and sustained across defence services. 

You will provide strategic technical leadership, influencing engineering direction and ensuring that modern, secure, and sustainable development practices are embedded. 

You will play a key role in setting the technical vision for software engineering within defence, helping to establish a strong and consistent engineering culture. Working across delivery teams and stakeholders, you will help ensure that solutions are robust, scalable, and aligned to both user needs and the wider defence technology landscape. 

This role requires deep technical expertise alongside the ability to influence at scale. As a Principal Developer, you will contribute to decisions that shape platforms, patterns, and approaches, supporting the delivery of applications and services that are critical to national security. 

In a rapidly changing landscape, we require experienced and flexible individuals who can work in a close-knit team to use their multi-disciplinary skills to collaborate, problem-solve, and deliver within a highly assured private cloud infrastructure environment. This is a capability-focussed team, working on unique and highly specialised data and insight solutions within a modern secure facility, contributing to capabilities of national significance. 

For more information on the benefits of working for UKHO and the Civil Service, please see the attached candidate pack.

As a Trading Fund of the Ministry of Defence, the UKHO works hand in glove with uniformed colleagues from across the Royal Navy and other allied Defence organisations to ensure the timely and accurate provision of mission-critical data at the point of need.

Supporting the defence development team in solving technical issues 

Provide expert technical guidance to defence related development teams, resolving complex or high risk technical issues, act as the escalation point and ensure that solutions are effective, sustainable and in line with our technical direction. 

Defining and Implementing engineering standards 

Lead the definition and adoption of engineering standards across the defence teams, ensuring consistency, quality and security in software delivery. Support teams to deliver these in everyday development practices. 

Working with business users to translate a user need into a design 

Work with business users and stakeholders to understand user needs and operational requirements. Translate these into clear, high‑level technical designs that balance user outcomes, technical constraints, and defence requirements. 

Working with other Principal Developers on a technology choice 

Work with peers to assess and agree technology choices across defence services. Ensure decisions are aligned with wider technical strategy and support long‑term sustainability.

Reviewing code/designs from within the defence area 

Review software code and technical designs to ensure they meet quality, security, and engineering standards. Provide constructive feedback to improve consistency, reduce risk, and support continuous improvement. 

Mentoring teams on best practice 

Mentor and coach development teams on modern engineering best practices. Support capability growth across defence by sharing knowledge, encouraging effective ways of working, and fostering a strong engineering culture.

• Practical coding experience in Net and awareness of Python 
• Wide range of development experience 
• Practical experience of leadership of technical teams 
• Up to date knowledge of modern engineering technology and tools 
• Experience in defining & implementing engineering standards

Alongside your salary of £61,605, UK Hydrographic Office contributes £17,846 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides. At the UK Hydrographic Office, it's very important to us that our people feel valued. We offer a huge range of benefits such as training and development, well-being support, flexible/ homeworking, a fantastic state of the art building, high spec equipment, and so much more. See our attached Candidate Information Pack for more details.

Please submit your application through Civil Service Jobs. You will be short-listed against set criteria.

Please read all criteria in detail and tailor your application to these requirements.