The planning system is one of the most important layers of everyday democracy. It shapes our homes, our neighbourhoods, our environment and therefore our lives. It is also at the front line of the climate challenge – as we retrofit our existing homes and neighbourhoods, and build new ones. Yet the planning system we have today is famous for being slow, opaque, bureaucratic, inconsistent and inaccessible, especially to those who don’t have a lot of money or time.

We are working with local planning authorities and the Department for Levelling Up, Homes and Communities (DLUHC) to help build a planning system fit for the 21st century. To do this, we are building Plan✕, an open source platform for creating and publishing digital government services, in particular planning services. They are some of the first government services in the world that use ‘rules-as-code’ to bake legislation, policies and guidance into the services themselves, making complicated, opaque services like planning simpler and more transparent for everyone.

Plan✕ is already being used by a growing number of planning authorities, but over the coming years we will be scaling-up its adoption across government – and likely to multiple governments. It's an exciting mission, with potential to transform how a key part of government works, but it is also a challenge.

To meet that challenge, we are looking for two new full stack developers to join our team, to contribute across the platform. This includes:

• Building a low-code, collaborative Editor or 'flow builder' that allows planning authorities to design and publish services, encoding legislative rules into simple, accessible services.

• Developing accessible form components that use logic.

• Integrating with new and legacy back office systems and helping develop new data standards that encourage interoperability.‍

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• Experience of working with TypeScript, Node.js, and React.

• High level of proficiency working with GraphQL and / or REST APIs.

• Excellent creative problem solving, critical thinking and communication skills with both technical and semi-technical team members, operating in an environment where there are uncertainties and unknowns.

• A natural doer-deliverer, who can work in an agile way, weigh up priorities and make good judgements, balancing short term delivery against long-term vision and future-proofing.

• A self-starting and proactive attitude, capable of working autonomously and independently while also collaborating effectively with a small, remote team 

• A love for clean, standards-compliant, well-patterned, well-documented code.

• Keen listener, who is able to identify, diagnose and fix issues based on feedback from users

• Comfortable and effective working collaboratively (and remotely) using Github.

• Experience of developing or managing integrations with third party software, and designing data structures.

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• Experience of working with Hasura or similar platforms.

• Experience of working with Docker, AWS, and Pulumi (or other Infrastructure as Code solutions).

• Experience of working with GIS data

• Experience of taking digital products from minimum viable product to scale, especially in government and public sector environments.

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• Ridiculously flexible working. Work where you want and when you want (most of the time at least).

• Work in a liberating organisational structure that focuses hard on reducing noise and burden on dev teams.

• Work with a small, but incredibly smart, motivated and friendly team of people working together to solve difficult problems, in a high-expectations, but always kind and inclusive environment.  

• Be part of a transformative public digital project, with potential to have a hugely positive impact on improving the planning system, and wider government as whole.