Ready to work somewhere that cares more about how you build software than how fast you can ship it? At Opencast, we don’t measure developers by the number of tickets you complete. We care about engineering craft, clean design and thoughtful problem-solving. Opencast consultants deliver in complex environments, pairing often and working with others who take pride in doing things properly: TDD, emerging design, refactoring and leaving code better than they found it. We build software we are proud of, and our clients trust us not just to code but to think, challenge and guide. If you value simple and robust solutions and want a role where your judgment matters as much as your keyboard, you will fit right in. The role We’re looking for Contractors in Software Development (consultant level) to help our major clients transform. Software developers at Opencast care about building products right and combine their own experience and approach with our company values. They are tech agnostic, have expertise in agile methodologies, extreme programming practices and use industry-leading programming languages to deliver agile transformation. Our approach to software development is collaborative, focused on keeping things simple, and we use test driven development and pair programming as best practice. Working with clients and key stakeholders is a crucial part of a consultancy role. Our developers are inclusive team players that listen, collaborate, can positively challenge and manage expectations when needed but most of all are always willing to teach and help others. Leaving a client with improved ways of working, working technology and a good experience from discovery through to live is the priority. Contractors at Opencast follow the same principles as permanent consultants. The roles are varied, technical, and never confined to any one provider or solution. Requirements Due to the nature of this role, applicants must either currently hold active Security Check (SC) Clearance or be eligible to obtain it. Eligibility typically requires UK citizenship and continuous residence in the UK for the past five years, with no single absence exceeding 28 consecutive days. As attendance at client sites is a routine part of the role’s working pattern and involves occasional travel, travel expenses are not covered. Experience in delivering digital services for the UK government is highly valuable for many of our projects. Therefore, familiarity with the GDS toolkit will be beneficial. Technical Skills - Expertise in Java and/or Scala is required - Experience with Javascript, Typescript, Kotlin, Python or Ruby is also valuable - Understanding of Object Oriented Programming - In depth knowledge of concepts and uses of testing - Knowledge or experience of delivering complex services to Government Digital Service (GDS) standards - Being comfortable with new technology, t-shaped and comfortable with ongoing learning and development is key to success - Experience with agile methodology A contractor in software development at Opencast is responsible for: - Delivering in the upkeep of their team’s backlog - Collaborating with the teams testing effort - Leading on the implementation of user stories - Embracing mobbing and pairing - Working with others in a collaborative, multi-disciplinary environment Salary Up to £450 per day (working inside IR35) Where you’ll work This role requires regular on-site attendance across our HQ, hub offices, client sites and home. Applicants must be able to commute to offices and client sites as part of their normal working arrangements, as travel is essential to fulfilling the responsibilities of the role. We include you We welcome candidates from all identities, attributes, ways of thinking and backgrounds to thrive in a career at Opencast. Our aim is for the diversity of our people to be reflected in the solutions we deliver, to help create a fairer society for all. Interview Interviews will be conducted via Microsoft Teams. We’re happy to make adjustments to support your needs. Want to know more? Visit our website for more details.

Ready to work somewhere that cares more about how you build software than how fast you can ship it? At Opencast, we don’t measure developers by the number of tickets you complete. We care about engineering craft, clean design and thoughtful problem-solving. Opencast consultants deliver in complex environments, pairing often and working with others who take pride in doing things properly: TDD, emerging design, refactoring and leaving code better than they found it. We build software we are proud of, and our clients trust us not just to code but to think, challenge and guide. If you value simple and robust solutions and want a role where your judgment matters as much as your keyboard, you will fit right in. The role We’re looking for Contractors in Software Development (Senior level or Technical Lead) to help our major clients transform. Software developers at Opencast care about building products right and combine their own experience and approach with our company values. They are tech agnostic, have expertise in agile methodologies, extreme programming practices and use industry-leading programming languages to deliver agile transformation. Our approach to software development is collaborative, focused on keeping things simple, and we use test driven development and pair programming as best practice. Working with clients and key stakeholders is a crucial part of a consultancy role. Our developers are inclusive team players that listen, collaborate, can positively challenge and manage expectations when needed but most of all are always willing to teach and help others. Leaving a client with improved ways of working, working technology and a good experience from discovery through to live is the priority. Contractors at Opencast follow the same principles as permanent consultants. The roles are varied, technical, and never confined to any one provider or solution. Requirements Due to the nature of this role, applicants must either currently hold active Security Check (SC) Clearance or be eligible to obtain it. Eligibility typically requires UK citizenship and continuous residence in the UK for the past five years, with no single absence exceeding 28 consecutive days. As attendance at client sites is a routine part of the role’s working pattern and involves occasional travel, travel expenses are not covered. Experience in delivering digital services for the UK government is highly valuable for many of our projects. Therefore, familiarity with the GDS toolkit will be beneficial. Technical Skills - Expertise in Java and/or Scala is required - Experience in other languages such as Javascript, Typescript, Kotlin, Python or Ruby is also valuable - Experience in a technical leadership role - Deep understanding of programming paradigm, code design, testing, accessibility, performance and security - Proven ability to apply different testing tools and methods in practice - Knowledge or experience of delivering complex services to Government Digital Service (GDS) standards - Being comfortable with new technology, t-shaped and comfortable with ongoing learning and development is key to success - Experience with agile methodology A senior level contractor in software development at Opencast is responsible for: - Driving the elaboration of their team’s backlog - Setting testing strategies to match industry standards - Being a technical expert in their team (or acting as the team lead) - Leading the technical representation in a project discovery - Acting as a technical lead in the team, enabling them to achieve their full potential Salary £450 - £600 per day (working inside IR35) Where you’ll work This role requires regular on-site attendance across our HQ, hub offices, client sites and home. Applicants must be able to commute to offices and client sites as part of their normal working arrangements, as travel is essential to fulfilling the responsibilities of the role. We include you We welcome candidates from all identities, attributes, ways of thinking and backgrounds to thrive in a career at Opencast. Our aim is for the diversity of our people to be reflected in the solutions we deliver, to help create a fairer society for all. Interview Interviews will be conducted via Microsoft Teams. We’re happy to make adjustments to support your needs. Want to know more? Visit our website for more details.

Check out this brand new role!

Ready to turn curiosity into impact?

Do you want to use research to shape services that make a real impact? Are you ready to bring curiosity and insight to projects that improve people’s lives?

If so, Opencast could be the place for you. We’re a growing tech consultancy that creates user-centred solutions with purpose for our clients in government, healthcare and purpose-driven businesses. As a User Researcher, you’ll uncover the needs and voices of people, work in multi-disciplinary teams to feed these needs into design decisions shape impactful services, and bring curiosity, pragmatism and insight to projects. You’ll enjoy, a supportive community whilst working across public sector clients, to solve real problems that impact people’s lives.

What you’ll do within our teams

• Plan research approaches for complex projects that might have multiple research activities running at the same time whilst being delivered by other researchers
• Offer oversight of research conducted by other people, either formally or informally, to improve research practices
• Identify where research points to areas that need more investigation and, where necessary, help to re-define the project scope and priorities in response to this
• Produce the required documentation and materials for research activity, including discussion guides and consent forms
• Recruit participants in line with GDPR and MRS guidelines
• Use your excellent communication skills to clearly explain your approach to your team and stakeholders

You’ll suit this role if you:

• Use a wide range of quantitative and qualitative research methods, including things like interviews, surveys, workshops, focus groups, shadowing, diary studies, usability testing, eye tracking, A/B testing, and analytics
• Have a strong understanding of GDS and designing to government service standards, preferably on projects that passed assessment(s)
• Can identify key themes, user needs, business needs, and personas through analysis
• Can explain findings to a range of audiences and translate these into areas of the service that need design focus
• Can produce user research deliverables like personas and journey maps
• Make sure your research is inclusive and includes people with disabilities and those who need support to use digital services
• Can build strong relationships with clients and persuade stakeholders of the importance of research to a project
• Thrive in a multidisciplinary team and encourage teammates to shadow and take part in research
• Understand agile processes
• Enjoy working with clients as they evolve and adapt
• Are naturally curious and able to champion your own learning and development
• Are an advocate for user-centred design
• Are respectful and tactful in your approach to clients who perhaps aren’t as familiar with user-centred design
• Are proactive and will take the initiative to solve a problem rather than seeing it and ignoring it
• Are keen to share your knowledge and experience

If you have any of this experience, please show it on your CV and in the interview.

The Role You’ll lead on responding to outages, triaging issues, balancing stakeholder priorities/concerns, and keeping open communication channels. You’ll be responsible for designing, developing, and implementing continuous deployment solutions that help our clients to deliver software faster and more efficiently. You’ll be keen to understand our clients’ ways of working and will have an enthusiasm to learn new tools and technologies as needed. Essential experience We want you to have demonstrable experience in DevOps practices and appreciate that Cloud & Platform Engineering are big topics. Ultimately, we’re looking for talented engineers who can learn modern technologies in the digital space. In the interview, please show your experience in: · Designing, building, and testing software release processes that cover the entire SDLC. · Creating, modifying, and maintaining complex CI/CD pipelines. · Creating dashboards and visualisations for application performance that proactively identify and address potential problems before they occur. · Using automated testing to detect security issues/vulnerabilities in application and/or infrastructure code, thereby detecting issues before it reaches production (aka Shift-Left). · Strong experience in operating and maintaining services primarily in any of the BIG three public cloud providers (AWS, Azure, and GCP). Desirable experience Some other areas of experience that are not essential but still relevant to the role: · Identifying problems using RCA or 5-Whys methods and suggesting solutions to reduce the likelihood of incidents reoccurring. · A strong understanding of cloud networking and security concepts. · Understanding the principles of containerisation, and how to control and orchestrate groups of containers in production environments. · Writing clean, organised, structured and version-controlled code. · Knowledge of at least one scripting language that enables you to perform more complex automation tasks thereby reducing manual toil. · Preference for using CLI tools over relying on web portals. · Understanding SRE (live services) ways of working, that enables you to better increase reliability and availability of the service you support. · Auditing your service for FinOps and SecOps related compliance issues. Must be eligible for UK Security Clearance. If you don’t have all this experience please do still apply, as we can coach you in these areas if you join us.