Engineer - Digital Innovation

FTE: 1 FTE (working 37 hours per week)

Duration of Contract: Fixed term for 2 years

Annual Leave: 30 days plus standard public holidays and an additional 4 days including closure of our office between Christmas and New Year

Location: College Lane Campus, Hatfield

Main duties and responsibilities

You will design, build and support digital services and applications that underpin key university activities, ensuring they are reliable, secure and well-integrated with other systems. You will translate requirements into technical designs and help translate needs and ideas into practical, user-centred solutions delivered through iterative Agile practices. You will take responsibility for assigned systems, monitor service health and usage, establish baselines, track trends, resolve issues, and support business continuity and disaster recovery arrangements. Alongside this, you will contribute to the ongoing improvement of the delivery pipeline by applying agreed practices to support reliable and efficient delivery. You will also maintain accurate documentation covering development, configuration, change, support, and operations, and collect service statistics and records as required.

Skills and experience required

We are looking for a software engineer with experience writing reliable software using established programming principals and language frameworks, applying automated testing, basic security principles, and clear documentation to support maintainable code. You should have experience using version control systems to manage code changes, collaborate with others and follow agreed branching, review and release practices alongside experience working with relational databases, including writing queries, maintaining data structures, and applying good practices to support data integrity and performance.

Experience integrating systems using APIs, understanding interface contracts and data exchange, and following agreed standards for integration is also essential. A good understanding of the software development lifecycle, contributing to design, development, testing, and maintenance activities is essential, as is experience contributing to software configuration and support. You will have good communication skills with the ability to work effectively as part of a team, collaborating with colleagues to share knowledge and solve problems. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills are important, along with the ability to work calmly and systematically in a busy environment. Experience with modern frontend technologies, containerisation, mobile or low-code platforms and emerging areas such as AI would be advantageous.

Qualifications required

You will be educated with a Degree or equivalent or equivalent professional experience and be educated with a Qualification in computing at professional level or equivalent expertise and experience.

Please view the job description and person specification for a full list of the duties and essential criteria, click the 'Apply' button above. Please attach a personal statement showing clearly how your skills and experience match the Person Specification.

Internal applicants – please ensure you apply via your employee self-service portal.

An appointment to this role may require an Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS) certificate.

We regret that we are unable to offer UKVI sponsorship for this post; applicants will either hold UK Right to Work or demonstrate access to UK Right to Work before an offer is made.

Contact Details/Informal Enquiries: Thomas Swaddling – t.swaddling@herts.ac.uk – Digital Innovation Lead

Closing Date: 03 June 2026

Interview Date: TBC

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