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 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:

• Developing accessible form components that use logic.

• 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.

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

• Improving system reliability and security using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) frameworks and building out smart CI pipelines and testing suites to help our small team stay nimble and productive.

Although this is one job advert, we may recruit more than one role, so if not all the requirements of the role fit you, that's no problem. If you're interested and think you can contribute, please apply.

We are interested in people with a range of levels of experience. You might have worked in a junior or senior role. However, please do not apply if this is your first role working with a software team.

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If in doubt, apply. Along with you CV and any examples or relevant work, please send us a brief cover message telling us what motivates you and why you are interested in this role.

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

• Excellent problem solving, critical thinking and communication skills with both technical and semi-technical team members. 

• 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.

• Enthusiasm for building highly modular, containerised software.

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

• Able to thrive in an iterative and sometimes ambiguous agile R&D environment, which requires trade-offs.

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

• Enthusiasm-for and knowledge-of DevOps and Infrastructure as Code, weaving continuous testing, monitoring, security and performance improvements into our development cycle.

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

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

• Experience of working with Hasura or similar platforms.

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

• Experience of taking digital products from minimum viable product to scale.

• Experience of working with GIS data.

• A level of autonomy, mastery and purpose that you don't find in most organisations.

• Work with a small, incredibly talented, friendly, and motivated team of people in a high-expectations, but always kind and inclusive environment.  You will be part of a team coming up with creative strategic and tactical solutions together.

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

• Take a key role in a transformative public digital project, with potential to have a hugely positive impact on improving a key layer of everyday democracy, and giving governments the tools they need to rise to the climate crisis.