About Us
West Midlands Police is the second largest police force in the country, covering an area of 348 square miles and serving a population of almost 2.8 million. The region sits at the heart of the country and covers the three major centres of Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton. It also includes the busy and thriving districts of Sandwell, Walsall, Solihull and Dudley. Leisure, retail and conference amenities, together with Premiership and Championship football teams, attract millions of visitors annually.
The West Midlands is an area rich in diversity, with 18 per cent of its population from ethnic minority backgrounds. An average of 170,000 motorists travel through the region daily, making its motorways some of the busiest in Europe. Against this backdrop, the force deals with more than 2,000 emergency calls for help every day, as well as patrolling the streets and responding to incidents 24-hours-a-day, seven days a week.
Job Description
West Midlands Police IT & Digital in 2025 is a dynamic and forward-thinking organisation of individuals committed to delivering excellent information technology solutions to support West Midlands Police and the public we serve. Cloud Services underpin all aspects of West Midlands Police today, we operate a technically hybrid estate, and our services running under Amazon Web Services are critical to enabling Police Officers and Police Staff to perform their roles and fulfil the Forces mission of 'working in partnership, making communities safer'.
The IT & Digital Cloud Services Team (AWS) are looking for an experienced full stack software developer with a passion for designing and developing modern business analytics applications on large complex datasets and running on scalable cloud infrastructure. If you would like to work within a Dev Ops team of skilled technologists and can make a positive impact on our current and future solutions this opportunity could be your next challenge.
The principal focus of this role is on our front-end technology solutions which are currently based on JavaScript web applications and Java based web services. The web services implement search across a number of database technologies from analytic search engines, traditional relational as well as graph databases. You can expect to be using tried and tested patterns to deliver rapid incremental deliverables with a client centric approach one day and exploring new technologies and approaches to move our solutions forward on another day.
You will develop and support mission critical policing systems, and enjoy working with native cloud technologies. At West Midlands Police IT & Digital there is a very wide scope to build your career across many and varied projects and technology disciplines.
Key Responsibilities
1. Design, build and implement web applications in support of operational policing
2. Collaborate within the Cloud Services Team, across the IT&D department as well as the wider organisation to design and build-in to all solutions the maximum know how and highest practicable value
3. Put people first and work to improve solutions developed in all aspects from user experience, maintainability, reliability, security and value for money
4. Research, learn and apply new techniques and frameworks to both improve current solutions and design new solutions to business challenges
Essential Knowledge and Skills
1. Ability to collaborate effectively within a team of software development professionals
2. Ability to gather a detailed understanding of business requirements, conceptualise potential solutions, articulate ideas and discuss designs within teams
3. Demonstrable knowledge and proven skills in building modern web applications including responsive user interfaces, ReST based web services and SQL data query and manipulation
4. Several years' experience developing Web applications with modern JavaScript frameworks such as Angular, React and Vue
5. Skilled in writing Java application code
6. Skilled in the design and interpretation of relational data models for storage and query of structured data
7. Ability to rapidly prototype ideas into simple working solutions, presenting to team and clients
8. Knowledge of traditional client server, 3-tier hosting and familiarity with Cloud computing concepts
9. Experienced using source code version control within a multi-disciplinary team
Desirable Skills
1. Experience developing solutions within a Continuous Integration and Delivery pipeline
2. Experience working with graph databases and interrogating the models using graph traversal languages
3. Knowledge and practical skills configuring Cloud based serverless runtime environments
4. Understand how to implement, and have implemented, authentication and authorisation into SPA's using OAuth 2.0 based protocols
Probationary Policy:
Under the Probation Policy, if you are currently in your probation period, during your probationary period you will not be permitted to apply for alternative police staff roles within the Force unless there are exceptional circumstances. In such cases, you would require the support of your line manager prior to applying for alternative roles, and if successful, your probationary period will start over.
Vetting:
Successful applicants will be required to pass Management Vetting and Security Clearance scrutiny prior to commencing their role, this will include a full background & financial disclosure as part of the vetting process.
Medical:
Appointment to this role will be dependent upon successfully medical checks, which may include a drugs test and if required a fitness test.
Hours: 36.5
Location: Lloyd House
Interviews: TBD
By choosing to join West Midlands Police you will receive an enhanced benefits package including:
* Fair remuneration with progression opportunities, and access to a very competitive pension scheme
* Enhanced annual leave in additional to public holiday entitlements
* Discounts across travel, parking, daily costs of living and leisure activities
* A comprehensive wellbeing package including 24/7 support, free eye tests and flu jabs
Prospective officers and staff must be held to a higher standard of behaviour and accountability than members of the public, and that therefore their right to privacy can be fettered in certain circumstances. This is to ensure that members of the police are fully aware and accountable for the unique powers entrusted to them and the standards of professional behaviour they swear to uphold.
West Midlands Police is a Disability Confident Leader - the highest level an organisation can achieve under the scheme run by the Department of Work and Pensions. As part of our commitment we operate a 'Disability Confident Interview Scheme' - all candidates who declare a disability and meet the essential criteria for the role will be offered an interview.
It is important to note that there may be occasions where it is not practicable or appropriate to interview all disabled people who meet the essential criteria for the job. For example: in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people.
In these circumstances, the employer could select the candidates who best meet the essential criteria for the job, as they would do for non-disabled applicants.
#J-18808-Ljbffr