Senior Software Engineers

Manchester
1 week ago
Create job alert

Senior Software Engineers
Location(s): Manchester, Greater Manchester or Samlesbury
Salary: £48,557 - £57,704, dependent on experience and including a basic salary and skills payment. Plus, you’ll receive a one-off recruitment bonus of £3,500 (£1,750 on arrival and £1,750 on successful completion of probation). There’s also the option to qualify for an increased skills payment of up to £19,113 once in-post, following a successful skills assessment.
Flexible Working: We recognise the importance of a healthy work-life balance and offer full-time, part-time, and compressed hours. While hybrid working can be more restricted, due to the nature of the work, some home working may be available depending on business needs. Find out more about flexible working on our website.
GCHQ is an intelligence, cyber and security agency with a mission to keep the UK safe. We use cutting-edge technology, ingenuity, and partnerships to identify, analyse and disrupt threats. Working with our intelligence partners MI5 and MI6, we protect the UK from terrorism, cyber-attacks, and espionage. At GCHQ you’ll do varied and fascinating work in a supportive and inclusive environment that puts the emphasis on teamwork.
As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll bring your experience of modern software frameworks and team leadership to our passionate tech community. You’ll help design new and existing systems, establish best working practices, and deliver high-quality solutions to mission-critical problems. With your expertise, you’ll operate at a deep technical level, leveraging your familiarity with languages such as C++, Golang, Java, JavaScript, .NET, Node, Python, Rust, and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
You might be mentoring a team or leading as a technical expert. You’ll be keen to develop not just your own skills, but those of others. Whether you’re bringing new approaches, sharing innovative ways of working, or identifying new priorities, you’ll set the standard. You’ll engage with technical and non-technical customers and have a positive influence on the wider engineering community. With our encouragement to spend up to 30% of your time on development, innovation, and experimentation, you’ll have the freedom to explore new possibilities for yourself, and for GCHQ.
You don’t need to be a Software Engineer to apply; you might be working in Cloud Engineering and Security, UX, Site Reliability Engineering, Front-End Design, Agile, Solution Architecture, Data Engineering, or Machine Learning Operations. You’ll also have experience leading Agile project teams and evaluating customer business requirements.
Upon joining, you’ll have access to a wide range of learning resources from online courses, conferences and opportunities to pursue formal qualifications (funded by us). We’ll provide all the support you need for a rewarding career, whether that’s through tailored training or flexible working options. In this role, we offer full-time, part-time and compressed hours, meaning you can enjoy a great work-life balance without compromising on what matters to you.
At GCHQ, diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission. To protect the UK, we need a truly diverse workforce that reflects the society we serve. This includes diversity in every sense of the word: those with different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, ways of thinking, and those with disabilities or neurodivergent conditions. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including those from groups that are under-represented in our workforce, such as women, those from an ethnic minority background, people with disabilities, and those from low socio-economic backgrounds. Find out more about our culture, working environment, and diversity on our website.
To find out more and apply, please visit our website.
To be eligible to apply, you must be a British Citizen. If you hold dual nationality, of which one component is British, you will nonetheless be considered. Candidates must normally have been resident in the UK for seven out of the last ten years. This is particularly important if you were born outside the UK. You can apply at the age of 17 years, if successful, you will not be offered a start date prior to your 18th birthday. Full eligibility details can be found on our website

Related Jobs

View all jobs

Senior Software Engineers

Senior Software Engineer

Senior Data Analyst

Senior Data Scientist

Senior Data Scientist

Senior API Developer (Python & AWS)

Get the latest insights and jobs direct. Sign up for our newsletter.

By subscribing you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service.

Industry Insights

Discover insightful articles, industry insights, expert tips, and curated resources.

Contract vs Permanent Data Science Jobs: Which Pays Better in 2025?

Data science sits at the intersection of statistics, machine learning, and domain expertise, driving crucial business decisions in almost every sector. As UK organisations leverage AI for predictive analytics, customer insights, and automation, data scientists have become some of the most in-demand professionals in the tech job market. By 2025, data scientists with expertise in deep learning, natural language processing (NLP), and MLOps are commanding top-tier compensation packages. However, deciding whether to become a day‑rate contractor, a fixed-term contract (FTC) employee, or a permanent member of an organisation can be challenging. Each path offers a unique blend of earning potential, career progression, and work–life balance. This guide will walk you through the UK data science job market in 2025, examine the differences between these three employment models, present sample take‑home pay scenarios, and offer strategic considerations to help you determine the best fit for your career.

Data Science Jobs for Non‑Technical Professionals: Where Do You Fit In?

Beyond Jupyter Notebooks Ask most people what a data‑science career looks like and they’ll picture Python wizards optimising XGBoost hyper‑parameters. The truth? Britain’s data‑driven firms need storytellers, strategists, ethicists and project leaders every bit as much as they need statisticians. The Open Data Institute’s UK Data Skills Gap 2024 places demand for non‑technical data talent at 42 % of all data‑science vacancies—roles focused on turning model outputs into business value and trustworthy decisions. This guide highlights the fastest‑growing non‑coding roles, the transferable skills many professionals already have, and a 90‑day action plan to land a data‑science job—no pandas required.

McKinsey & Company Data‑Science Jobs in 2025: Your Complete UK Guide to Turning Data into Impact

When CEOs need to unlock billion‑pound efficiencies or launch AI‑first products, they often call McKinsey & Company. What many graduates don’t realise is that behind every famous strategy deck sits a global network of data scientists, engineers and AI practitioners—unified under QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey. From optimising Formula One pit stops to reducing NHS wait times, McKinsey’s analytics teams turn messy data into operational gold. With the launch of the McKinsey AI Studio in late 2024 and sustained demand for GenAI strategy, the firm is growing its UK analytics headcount faster than ever. The McKinsey careers portal lists 350+ open analytics roles worldwide, over 120 in the UK, spanning data science, machine‑learning engineering, data engineering, product management and AI consulting. Whether you love Python notebooks, Airflow DAGs, or white‑boarding an LLM governance roadmap for a FTSE 100 board, this guide details how to land a McKinsey data‑science job in 2025.