Principal Software Engineer (1893)

Salary - £74,480 - £85,964 (plus a £5000 Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) pay supplement after a 3 month qualifying period)
Location - Dundee or Glasgow
Hours - 35 hours per week
Closing Date - 11th August 2025 at 23:55
Reference - 1893
Employment Type - Permanent

Overview

We are looking for an experienced Curam Social Program Management (SPM) Specialist to join our Digital and Technology team. This is an exciting opportunity to play a key role in the design, development, and ongoing support of our Curam platform, which underpins critical services for clients.

As a subject matter expert in Curam SPM, you will bring deep technical knowledge of the platform’s architecture, configuration, and lifecycle management. You will work closely with multidisciplinary teams to ensure our Curam solutions are robust, scalable, and aligned with user needs.

In addition to your technical responsibilities, you will play a vital role in building internal capability by designing and delivering structured Curam training programmes. Your contribution will help develop our in-house expertise and support the long-term sustainability of our digital services.

The role works in directly to the Chief Architect and is a cross-cutting role between the Architecture and Engineering branches. The role requires working between Architectural standards and reviews while also working with Engineering staff to help train and support their coding development. As part of the role, you will also assist with ongoing priority incidents, providing guidance to assist resolution.

Social Security Scotland, an Executive Agency of the Scottish Government, is undertaking the largest and most complex IT and digital change programme since devolution. With a lifetime budget of over £300m, Social Security Scotland is delivering a social security system that will support the people of Scotland for decades to come.

We aim to develop within Social Security Scotland, a positive and inclusive culture, which supports our people to flourish, by embedding a working environment where we all treat each other with dignity and respect, and recognise each other’s contributions.

A principal developer leads and plans development across large or multiple teams.

At this role level, you will:

• be an expert in many technical areas or a specialist with very deep knowledge in a particular technical area.
• use this knowledge, and work with related disciplines, to keep multiple teams working effectively.
• develop capability by facilitating internal mobility, shaping career paths and recruiting talent, ensuring they collaborate.
• identify, test and champion the adoption of emerging technologies
  

DDaT Pay Supplement

This post is part of the Scottish Government Digital, Data and Technology (DDAT) profession and as a member of the profession you will join the professional development system. This post currently attracts a £5,000 annual DDAT pay supplement, applicable after a 3 months competency qualifying period. The payment will be backdated to your start date in the role. Pay supplements are reviewed regularly and there is one currently underway. Changes will be communicated when the review is concluded.

Main Duties

• You share best practice and coach others.
  
• You maintain technical responsibility for all the stages and iterations of a software development project.
  
• You provide technical advice to stakeholders and set the team-based standards for programming tools and techniques.
  
• You use a variety of prototyping methods.
  
• You manage service components to ensure they meet business needs and performance targets.
  
• You identify and implement opportunities to optimise processes.
  
• You lead and develop a team of experts to deliver service improvements.
  
• You help to evaluate and establish requirements for the implementation of changes by setting policy and standards.
  
• You lead the information security process in teams.
  
• You design, quality review and quality assure solutions and services with security controls embedded, specifically engineered with mitigation of security threats as a core feature.
  
• You apply the most appropriate SPM standards and practices, and coach and guide others in these standards.
  
• You advise on the right way to apply standards and methods to ensure compliance.
  
• You look at strategic service design end to end.
  
• You identify, locate and fix faults.
  
• You design systems characterised by high levels of risk, impact, and business or technical complexity.
  
• You control system design practice within an enterprise or industry architecture.
  
• You influence industry-based models for the development of new technology applications.
  
• You develop effective implementation and procurement strategies, consistent with business needs.
  
• You ensure adherence to relevant technical strategies, policies, standards and practices.
  
• You define the integration build.
  
• You co-ordinate build activities across systems.
  
• You understand how to undertake and support integration testing activities.
  
• You collaborate with user researchers and can represent users internally.
  
• You champion user research to focus on all users.
  
• You prioritise and define approaches to understand the user story, guiding others in doing so.
  
• You offer recommendations on the best tools and methods to use.
  
• You will have proven experience at designing, developing and delivering SPM courses in areas such as Curam Express Rules, Workflow, Intelligent Evidence Gathering and Batch.
  
• You will help to identify, test and champion the adoption of emerging technologies to help drive supportable and sustainable services

Further Information

Social Security Scotland are a Disability Confident Employer. We will consider and implement any reasonable adjustments you may require throughout the recruitment process and during the course of your employment, should you be successful in securing a post. If you feel you may require assistance with any part of our recruitment process, please contact us at Recruitment@socialsecurity.gov.scot.

More information about the role and how to apply is available at: Principal Software Engineer at Social Security Scotland