Location
ONS operates a flexible hybrid working model across the UK, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations in Newport, Titchfield (Fareham) or Manchester and working between office and remote throughout the week.
As part of the hybrid working arrangement there is a 40% minimum office attendance requirement. Attendance is typically at your contractual office, with occasional travel to alternative locations.
About The Job
Job summary
Are you currently studying for a Bachelors degree or a Masters in a subject relevant to Software Engineering?
Our fantastic Software Engineer Graduate Programme is a combined Year-in-industry and Graduate programme, offers you potential progression through three stages, leading to a permanent role after graduation and opportunities to build a successful long-term career with us.
Our Year in Industry placement is a year in our established Software Engineer Graduate Programme. It is an opportunity to gain vital experience working across our unique software stack and programmes.
How the programme works overall
Stage 1: Year in industry placement All successful candidates through this process will be offered a one year fixed-term contract to complete the Year in Industry placement initially. On completion of your interview, you will be required to undertake an assessment to determine which team you will be allocated to.
Stage 2: Part-time and flexible employment. Towards the end of the first year, all Year in Industry participants will undertake an assessment to remain with ONS if they wish to do so for their final year of studies. This will be on a flexible and part-time basis, and on a further one year fixed-term contract basis.
Stage 3: Permanent employment. Upon graduation, those having completed the two periods will undertake an assessment to join us on a permanent basis.
If you want to find out more about the programme, we will be running a webinar on Wednesday 18th December 11:00 – 12:00, with an opportunity to meet this year's students, their managers and our recruitment team. Please click the following link to sign up: Software Engineer Year In Industry Candidate Information Session
Job Description
Working as part of our development teams, you’ll be using agile methods and enjoy working openly and collaboratively. Working alongside other software engineers, user researchers, interaction designers, product managers, architects and analysts, you will be building and supporting a range of products and platforms. There are opportunities to improve existing services and to build new products that will transform how our organisation works.
As a Year in Industry student you will be provided with a comprehensive training programme and all the support you need to develop both your technical and personal skills. You will play an integral part of your team and will be part of the wider Software Engineering Community of Practice who will also provide you with plenty of opportunity to learn from peers in a supportive environment.
You will be coached and developed to:
- Deliver high quality products, applications and infrastructure using code.
- Build, support and continuously improve software products to meet user needs.
- Test (manual and automated) to ensure standards are met.
- Contribute to coding standards and perform code reviews.
- Support software design principles, such as re-use, open-source solutions, 12-factor and iterative delivery.
- Ensure security standards are met.
- Actively participate in a wider community of software developers – sharing experiences and identifying good practices.
- Work within, improve on and analyse industry, government and ONS security practices.
We deliver using a wide range of programming languages and tools, training our teams to use, amongst others: Python, JavaScript, Node, Java, Go, R and SAS as well as web frameworks such as Flask, Django and React. Tools including Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio and GitHub and mobile app development.
And deploy and run using:
- Cloud infrastructure such as AWS, Google and Azure.
- Infrastructure as code using Terraform and native cloud solutions
- Continuous integration/continuous development pipelines such as Concourse and cloud-native build-run tooling
We have successfully delivered a variety of exciting projects, such as:
- Census 2021
- Covid Infection Survey
- Statistical Production Platform
We are committed to the continuous development of our digital data ingest and survey data collection platforms, alongside centralised data analysis and presentation tooling.
Where possible we follow the principle of coding in the open and we publish our code to GitHub under https://github.com/ONSdigital
Person specification
We do not expect you to be expert in anything, but we do want enthusiastic people who are keen to learn what it’s like to be a software professional in the real world. Perhaps you manage your own open-source projects, have developed a mobile app or coded on a Raspberry Pi.
We can help you to develop those skills further. You will work on an existing project or programme where you will be coached and helped to become a fully contributing member of our team for the duration of your placement.
- You’ll have a passion for building solutions and an aptitude for technology.
- You are able to use your knowledge to identify & select the right technical tools and techniques for the job.
- Your aptitude for IT will be complimented by your ability to work at pace, to collaborate and partner with others and to provide a quality service.
- You will be someone who continuously seeks opportunities to change and improve the products and platforms that you work with.
- You’ll be able to apply your knowledge of agile delivery and other techniques such as Test-Driven Development, Behaviour-Driven Development and Pair Programming to the work you do.
Please note that you must be studying for a degree or a Masters in a subject relevant to the post you are applying for and be returning to university after completing your placement.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Delivering at Pace
- Working Together
- Changing and Improving
Technical Skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Please detail what relevant subject (for either a Bachelor’s Degree or Masters) you are currently studying?
- What year are you due to graduate?
- Why are you interested in joining the Year In Industry programme at the Office for National Statistics?
- Tell us about a software programme or project you have been involved with, either as part of a team or independently.
Benefits
Alongside your salary of £27,252, Office for National Statistics contributes £7,894 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our 5400 valued colleagues across the business.
This role is part of the cross-government Government Digital and Data (formerly DDaT) profession framework. As a role within Government Digital and Data (formerly DDaT) at the ONS, we also offer benefits such as:
- Protected Learning Time to spend on your personal development and side-projects.
- A supportive and active Community of Practice which you will be expected to contribute to, helping ensure you and your colleagues get the training, development and opportunities you need to progress your careers.
ONS are committed to flexible ways of working that support a healthy work-life balance. ONS has already considered how this job could be right sized for applicants working flexibly and we are happy to explore options with you about working part time or flexibly, in line with our hybrid working policies.
Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that the benefits pack attached (bottom of page) will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues and our fantastic working culture.
Inclusion & Accessibility
At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.
As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.
If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.
Things you need to know
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window) , and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.
Security Clearance
The requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying.
A lack of UK residency in itself is not always a bar to security clearance, but the Department will need to consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.
If you are unsure that you meet the eligibility above, please read the information available on Gov.uk on this link , or contact the recruitment email on the advert before applying to discuss, as failure to meet the residency requirements will result in your security clearance application being rejected and any offer of employment being withdrawn.
At the point of SC application, you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:
- Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
- UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
- Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
- Security Services records
Applicant support
Applicants may utilise AI resources in their submissions; ensuring all information provided is factually accurate, truthful, and original, avoiding any form of plagiarism to maintain the authenticity and credibility of the application process.
Stage 1 – Application
Application stage will be based on your CV and response to the above 4 relevant questions in the technical skills section in the application form. You are also required to answer a question around your eligibility to partake in this programme. You must be studying for a Bachelors degree or a Masters in a subject relevant to the post you are applying for and be returning to university after completing your placement If you do not answer this question, your application will not be processed.
Your CV should be tailored to demonstrate any skills, knowledge and experience that are relevant to the content of the role, specifically the criteria within the person specification.
Success Profiles Behaviour examples are not required at the application stage.
In cases where there are a high number of applications the sift pass mark may be adjusted and candidates will be invited to interview in merit order, i.e. those scoring the highest.
Stage 2 – Interview
Should you be invited to interview, you will be assessed using various assessment techniques aligned to the Civil Service Success Profiles framework, where you'll be assessed against all the behaviours outlined in the advert.
Further information will be provided to successful candidates prior to interview if any specific preparation is needed.
Interviews will be conducted by Video Conference.
A reserve list may be held for a period up to 9 months from which further appointments may be made. We may share this list with other government departments who run similar schemes. We will contact you first before we do share any information to gain your consent.
Important Dates:
Sift date: From 27/01/2025
Interview dates: From 10/02/2025
For the full terms and conditions of the post, please see attachment below.
Please note, the start date will be on Wednesday 3rd September 2025, where you will be expected to attend a 2 day induction at our Newport office (travel & stay can be claimed back if Newport is not your agreed working location).
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window) . See our vetting charter (opens in a new window) .
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Nationality Requirements
This job is broadly open to the following groups:
- UK nationals
- nationals of the Republic of Ireland
- nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
- individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
- Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service
Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)
Working for the Civil Service
The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window) .
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window) .
Apply and further information
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.
Contact point for applicants
Job contact :
- Name : Government Digital and Data Recruitment Team
- Email : Government-Digital-and-Data-Recruitment@ons.gov.uk
Recruitment team
- Email : Government-Digital-and-Data-Recruitment@ons.gov.uk
Further information
If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, in the first instance, you should contact recruitment.complaints@ons.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission