Awarded to Nimble Approach

Start date: Monday 11 February 2019
Value: £77,350
Company size: SME

Department for Education

Senior Developer - Buying for Schools Digital Platform

20 Incomplete applications

19 SME, 1 large

15 Completed applications

12 SME, 3 large

• Published: Tuesday 8 January 2019
• Deadline for asking questions: Tuesday 15 January 2019 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Tuesday 22 January 2019 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Specialist role: Developer
• Summary of the work: An opportunity has arisen for a senior developer to work with the Schools Commercial Team to help us deliver a digital service designed to help schools save money when buying goods and services for their school.
• Latest start date: Monday 11 February 2019
• Expected contract length: Up to 12 months. Private Beta to last 12 weeks
• Location: Yorkshire and the Humber
• Organisation the work is for: Department for Education

About the work

• Who the specialist will work with: You will be joining an existing multi-disciplinary team consisting of delivery manager, product manager, user researcher, interaction designer, content designer and a technical architect
• What the specialist will work on: As a developer on this project you will be working on building a system aimed at staff in schools. You will be working as part of a multidisciplinary user-focused digital delivery team, within a wider programme of work across the schools commercial team. You will work closely with the technical architect and other team members to design and develop a simple and sustainable service, including considerations for operability. We expect you to be familiar with modern frameworks and languages, as well as working practices such as TDD, continuous integration, continuous delivery and DevOps.

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: Department for Education, 2 St Pauls Place, Sheffield, S1 2FJ
• Working arrangements: Ideally co-located with the team in Sheffield but consideration will be given to remote working. Occasional travel to other DfE sites may be required. We will operate using agile methodology including daily stand ups, sprint planning, sprints, retrospectives and show and tells. Face to face attendance at all Show and Tells is expected.
• Security clearance: BPSS (Baseline Security Level)

Additional information

• Additional terms and conditions: The framework operates on a statement of work (SOW), if the final SOW for Private Beta is complete, and a decision is taken not to proceed to Public Beta, the contract can be terminated. Additional contractual clauses expected include: GDPR, Departmental Security Standards (for departmental data) & clauses on issued property and use of premises.

Skills and experience

Buyers will use the essential and nice-to-have skills and experience to help them evaluate suppliers’ technical competence.

• Essential skills and experience:
  • Experience building server-side web applications and detailed knowledge of at least one programming language
  • Experience of using NodeJS to build and run production systems
  • Detailed understanding and experience of front-end web development (HTML/CSS/JS)
  • Ability to develop efficient and clear code and systems
  • Understanding of and experience with a range of approaches to testing application code and systems for behaviour and performance
  • An ability to communicate technical concepts to a non-technical audience
  • Experience working on technical projects within an agile team
  • Working knowledge of unix-like operating systems such as Linux and/or Mac OS X
  • Knowledge of the git version control system
  • Familiarity with DevOps and continuous iterative delivery principles
  • Demonstrable experience in using and configuring continuous integration systems
• Nice-to-have skills and experience:
  • Experience building services to the Digital Service Standard
  • Experience in progressing a service from alpha into private beta
  • Experience acting as a "tech lead" on complex projects, providing support for product and delivery management and pragmatically weighing the complexities involved against the need to act
  • Systems administration and configuration management skills
  • Experience running a production service, including setting up appropriate monitoring and alerting
  • Experience presenting work at user groups and conferences
  • Understanding of the use of Responsive Web Design
  • Experience with testing and improving the accessibility of services
  • Experience of using GitHub and/or working in the open
  • Experience of deploying applications to run on Platform as a Service offerings
  • Experience with Microsoft Azure
  • Experience with Continuous Integration as a Service platforms

How suppliers will be evaluated

• How many specialists to evaluate: 3
• Cultural fit criteria:
  • Work with third parties to take Alpha designs and move them into developed Beta's
  • Integrate successfully into an existing Agile team with existing working practices
  • Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers
  • Be transparent and collaborative when making decisions
  • Have a no-blame culture and encourage people to learn from their mistakes
  • Share knowledge and experience with other team members
  • Challenge the status quo
• Assessment methods:
  • Work history
  • Reference
  • Interview
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  50%

  Cultural fit

  20%

  Price

  30%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. Is this role is within the intermediaries legislation (also known as IR35) or deemed outside?: The intermediaries legislation (also known as IR35) does not apply to this engagement.
• 2. Is there a maximum day rate for this for this role?: No, there is no maximum day rate specified. ; ; As set out in the evaluation weighting, our priority is appointing the candidate who possesses the required technical skills and experience, however, cost carries a 30% weighting and will be a factor in the evaluation.
• 3. Is there a current incumbent?: No
• 4. How much of the position will be working remotely?: Our preference is that the candidate will be co-located with the rest of the team in Sheffield. However, as a minimum we will require the candidate to be on site at least three days per week and to attend sprint planning, show and tells and sprint retrospectives in person.