About us

dxw works with the public and third sectors to create user-focused services and products that improve lives.

We’ve been around since 2008 and worked on lots of projects that have made a real difference – things like launching a community to support people experiencing mental health problems and exploring how to improve digital collaboration between local authorities.

dxw is employee-owned and staff have an important voice in the direction of the company. People are at the forefront of what we do — the people who work at dxw, our clients, and the people we create services for.

We work effectively, remotely, with people based all around the UK. We keep in touch all the time for work and for social things, and some of us get together in person in our Leeds HQ and coworking spaces in London when we can.

We're looking for a developer to join our GovPress team, building and iterating websites for the public sector. 

About the role

This is a hands-on coding role. As a member of the GovPress product team, you'll be working mostly in PHP, developing content-focused sites as part of multidisciplinary project teams. Most of our sites are built in WordPress, although you will sometimes work with other technologies too. Sometimes you’ll be the only developer on a project, but you’ll also often collaborate with other developers, designers and user researchers from dxw as well as product owners from our clients.

We build accessible products and services that meet users’ needs, work in an agile way and aim to inspire our clients with our practises. You’ll collaborate with clients as a team when writing and prioritising work, and communicate with them frequently as you’re doing development.

We try to use the right technology for the problem at hand – here are some of the things you'll end up working with:

• PHP and WordPress

• HTML, CSS and JavaScript

• MySQL

• Git and GitHub

• Python and Wagtail

• AWS, Docker and Terraform

Apart from PHP, Git and WordPress, we don't expect you to have experience with everything in that list – you can pick up particular skills and tools as you need them, and we're eager to help you learn.

In project teams we use code-reviewing to share knowledge and improve our skills. For cross-team learning, all our project teams take “dxw time” to work together on internal projects, learning new technologies and sharing things we've been doing.

About you

You are proficient with PHP and have some familiarity with WordPress. You are comfortable writing object-oriented, testable PHP and managing your code within a version control system. Public repositories for our WordPress template and GOV.UK theme will give you a feel for how we approach projects.You’re happy to learn about the other technologies we use, and more, if you’re not already familiar with them.

You are comfortable in a highly collaborative and communicative workplace, including giving and receiving code reviews, and are keen to share skills and knowledge with your team and our clients.

You understand the importance of secure coding practises, and are eager to learn more. If you care about collaboration, continuous improvement, and building public services, then dxw is the right place for you.

Join us!

We're committed to building an inclusive environment and broadening diversity across our development team. We welcome non-traditional paths into the development profession and aim to hire the right person for the role. We especially encourage candidates historically excluded from technology to apply, including but not limited to people of colour, women and people whose gender doesn’t always align neatly with “man” or “woman”, parents and carers, people with visible and invisible disabilities and atypical neurotypes, and people who didn’t go to university.

Our public sector work means that appointments will be made subject to a background check.

For more information about dxw, visit www.dxw.com or read our Playbook where we document the ways we work, our values and our commitments to sustainable pace and openness.

Key facts

• £40,000 - £50,000

• Permanent, or fixed-term contract

• You can be based anywhere in the UK. When current restrictions are lifted, some travel within the UK may be required, usually to our offices in Leeds or London, but occasionally elsewhere.

Package

• Annual £1000 personal learning and development allowance

• Interest-free season ticket loans and cycle to work scheme

• Up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave depending on your situation

• 25 days holiday plus bank holidays

• Pension with up to 5% matching employer contribution