Salary: £40,921 - £44,484, dependent on experience and including a basic salary and skills payment. Additionally, you’ll receive a one-off recruitment bonus of £2,000 (£1,000 on arrival and £1,000 upon successful completion of probation).
Flexible Working: We recognise the importance of a healthy work-life balance and offer full-time, part-time, and compressed hours. Due to the nature of the work, hybrid working may be more restricted. However, some home working options might be available depending on business requirements.
GCHQ is an intelligence, cyber and security agency with a mission to keep the UK safe. We use cutting-edge technology, ingenuity, and partnerships to identify, analyse and disrupt threats. Working with our intelligence partners MI5 and MI6, we protect the UK from terrorism, cyber-attacks, and espionage. At GCHQ, you’ll do varied and fascinating work in a supportive and inclusive environment that puts the emphasis on teamwork.
The Role
As a Software Engineer, you’re part of a collaborative, Agile team and contribute to a diverse range of projects designed to transform our organisation and address the challenges we face. You might be reviewing pull requests for integration or leveraging different approaches such as pairing, mobbing and individual programming. Whatever the project, your role is to deliver solutions that are pivotal to our operations.
About You
Determined and self-motivated, you’ll persevere when faced with seemingly unsolvable problems. You enjoy working with others to find solutions and are keen to further your learning and development in this field. Join GCHQ and be part of a team that values diverse perspectives. If you’re passionate about our mission and meet most of the criteria, we encourage you to apply. Your unique skills and experiences could be just what we need.
Training and Development
At GCHQ, we embrace a growth mindset. We’re committed to your continuing development and offer tailored support to complement your preferred learning style. You'll be encouraged to dedicate time to continual professional development, both technical and non-technical, and to learn through experimentation and innovation. From day one, you’ll have access to mentors and subject matter experts, and we’ll help you create a structured development and career plan that’s right for you.
From books, online courses, and conferences to hands-on projects supported by our team, we’ll provide the resources you need. We’ll even provide funding towards formal qualifications. You’ll have access to learning and development opportunities tailored to your role, covering a multitude of software disciplines including Front-End Design, RF Software Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering, Data Engineering, Solution Architecture, Machine Learning Operations, UX, Agile, Cloud Engineering & Security.
Potential training courses could include:
* Certified SCRUM Master
* Microservices Architecture Training
* Advanced/Software Engineering Patterns
* User Experience
* Internal Training – for example Team Leadership (difficult conversations, leading a team etc.)
* Cloud Academy / Pluralsight / O'Reilly Subscription
Plus, as you gain experience and further your knowledge, you’ll have opportunities for skills reviews that can lead to recognised additional skills payments.
Rewards and Benefits
You’ll receive a starting salary of £40,921 - £44,484 dependent on skills and experience, with an additional one-off recruitment bonus of £2,000, plus other benefits including:
* 25 days annual leave, automatically rising to 30 days after 5 year’s service, and an additional 10.5 days of public and privilege holidays.
* Opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme.
* Interest-free season ticket loan (parking and travel).
* Cycle to work scheme.
* Facilities such as a gym and restaurant, and on-site coffee bars (at some locations).
* Paid parental and adoption leave.
At GCHQ diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission. To protect the UK, we need a truly diverse workforce that reflects the society we serve. This includes diversity in every sense of the word: those with different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, ways of thinking, and those with disabilities or neurodivergent conditions. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including those from groups that are under-represented in our workforce such as women, those from an ethnic minority background, people with disabilities, and those from low socio-economic backgrounds. Find out more about our culture, working environment and diversity on our website here .
We’re Disability Confident
GCHQ is proud to have achieved Leader status within the DWP’s Disability Confident scheme. This is aimed at encouraging employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain, and develop disabled people. As a Disability Confident employer, we aim to offer a fair and proportionate number of person-to-person interviews to any candidate who self-identifies as disabled and meets the essential criteria for the role. This is our “offer of Interview” (OOI). To secure an interview for this vacancy, the essential criteria (in order of application process) are:
* Demonstrate a strong motivation to learn and adapt to Agile ways of working.
* Demonstrate an ability to develop software features.
* Demonstrate experience of working as a Software Engineer in a software engineering environment. This could include an industry placement.
There is a wide range of extra support available throughout the recruitment process to enable you to do your best, see our website for information on reasonable adjustments we can offer.
What to Expect
Our recruitment process is fair, transparent, and based on merit. Here is a brief overview of each stage, in order:
* Technical and competency-based interview, including a presentation.
If successful, you will receive a conditional offer of employment, subject to vetting.
Please note, you must successfully pass each stage of the process in order to progress to the next. Your application may take around six to nine months to process including vetting, so we advise you continue any current employment until you have received your final job offer.
Before You Apply
To work at GCHQ, you need to be a British citizen or hold dual British nationality. You can read our full eligibility criteria here .
This role requires the highest security clearance, known as Developed Vetting (DV). It’s something everyone in the UK Intelligence Community undertakes. You can find out more about the vetting process here.
Please note we have a strict drugs policy, so once you start your application, you can’t take any recreational drugs, and you’ll need to declare your previous drug usage at the relevant stage.
Before you apply, we advise you to consider setting up a separate email address for your contact with us to ensure your personal and application correspondence remain separate. Try to avoid having identifying features in your email address, such as your first and/or surname and date of birth. This is good practice and will help you manage your application with us more securely.
The role is based in Cheltenham, so you’ll need to live within a commutable distance. Please consider any financial implications and practicalities before submitting an application, as we do not offer relocation costs.
Please note, you should only launch your application from within the UK. If you are based overseas, you should wait until you visit the UK to launch an application. Applying from outside the UK will impact our ability to progress your application.
Right to Withdraw Statement:
Please be aware that we reserve the right to bring forward the closing date for this role from the original closing date once a certain number of applications have been received. Please be mindful of this and submit your application at your earliest convenience to avoid disappointment
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