Developer jobs in United Kingdom

At IBM CIC, we provide technical and industry expertise to a wide range of public and private sector clients in the UK.

A career in IBM CIC means you’ll have the opportunity to work with leading professionals across multiple industries to improve the hybrid cloud and AI journey for the most innovative and valuable companies in the world. You will get the chance to deliver effective solutions, driving meaningful business change for our clients, using some of the latest technology platforms.

Curiosity and a constant quest for knowledge serve as the foundation to success here. You’ll be encouraged and supported to constantly reinvent yourself, focusing on skills in demand in an ever changing market. You’ll be working with diverse teams, coming up with creative solutions which impact a wide network of clients, who may be at their site or one of our CIC or IBM locations. Our culture of evolution centres on long-term career growth and development opportunities in an environment that embraces your unique skills and experience.

We offer:

• Many training opportunities from classroom to e-learning, mentoring and coaching programs and the chance to gain industry recognized certifications
• Regular and frequent promotion opportunities to ensure you can drive and develop your career with us
• Feedback and checkpoints throughout the year
• Diversity & Inclusion as an essential and authentic component of our culture through our policies and process as well as our Employee Champion teams and support networks
• A culture where your ideas for growth and innovation are always welcome
• Internal recognition programs for peer-to-peer appreciation as well as from manager to employees
• Tools and policies to support your work-life balance from flexible working approaches, sabbatical programs, paid paternity leave, maternity leave and an innovative maternity returners scheme
• More traditional benefits, such as 25 days holiday (in addition to public holidays), private medical, dental & optical cover, online shopping discounts, an Employee Assistance Program, life assurance and a group personal pension plan of an additional 5% of your base salary paid by us monthly to save for your future.

In this role, you'll work in one of our IBM Consulting Client Innovation Centers (Delivery Centers), where we deliver deep technical and industry expertise to a wide range of public and private sector clients around the world. Our delivery centers offer our clients locally based skills and technical expertise to drive innovation and adoption of new technology.

Your role and responsibilities

As a Lead FrontEnd Developer working within IBM’s Public Sector team, you will play a key role in delivering innovative digital services that support large‑scale government transformation. You will lead the development of high‑quality front‑end solutions, set engineering standards, shape technical architecture, and guide the team through complex challenges across major public sector programmes. As part of the senior technical leadership group, you will also contribute to stakeholder engagement and strategic planning at the account level.

• Define scalable, maintainable technical architectures, patterns, and best practices for front‑end delivery across public sector projects.
• Serve as technical lead — setting direction, ensuring code quality, and aligning delivery with government and client objectives.
• Mentor and support junior and mid‑level developers, fostering a culture of continuous learning, collaboration, and engineering excellence.
• Work closely with designers, backend engineers, DevOps teams, QA, and other partners to deliver robust, end‑to‑end digital services.
• Translate public sector business requirements into clear technical designs and, ultimately, intuitive user experiences.
• Design and lead the implementation of development workflows, CI/CD pipelines, testing strategies, and release processes.
• Communicate technical decisions, constraints, and trade‑offs effectively to IBM stakeholders and public sector clients.

Required education

None

Preferred education

Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• Strong understanding of design systems, component libraries, and working closely with UX/UI teams.
• Proven track record in technical leadership roles, leading delivery teams in complex, multi‑environment projects.
• Strong understanding of frontend architecture, including performance, security and compliance, accessibility, and scalability considerations.
• Experience defining the implementation of robust testing strategies (unit, integration, E2E) and managing quality in delivery pipelines.
• Strong understanding of DevOps practices and tooling relevant to frontend development.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills — able to engage with clients, present solutions, and explain technical concepts clearly.
• Experience working in agile, cross‑functional teams, with an understanding of effective delivery methodologies.
• Outstanding problem‑solving skills and ability to handle multiple tasks concurrently.

As an equal opportunities’ employer, we welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds. However, for you to be eligible for this role, you must have the valid right to work in the UK. Unfortunately, we do not offer visa sponsorship and have no future plans to do so. You must be a resident in the UK and have been living continuously in the UK for the last 10 years. You must be able to hold or gain a UK government security clearance.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Experience in consulting or client‑facing roles, ideally in a digital or enterprise environment.
• Familiarity with backend technologies (e.g., Node.js, APIs) and how frontend integrates into broader systems.
• Exposure to cloud‑native architectures (e.g., AWS, Azure, serverless, containerized environments).
• Experience contributing to pre‑sales and project discovery phases by advising on technical feasibility and shaping solutions.
• Involvement in technical communities or thought leadership (e.g., speaking, blogging, OSS contributions).

IBM Consulting is IBM’s consulting and global professional services business, with market leading capabilities in business and technology transformation. With deep expertise in many industries, we offer strategy, experience, technology, and operations services to many of the most innovative and valuable companies in the world. Our people are focused on accelerating our clients’ businesses through the power of collaboration. We believe in the power of technology responsibly used to help people, partners and the planet.

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on‑going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can‑do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal‑opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

IBM wants you to bring your whole self to work and for you this might mean the ability to work flexibly. If you are interested in a flexible working pattern, please talk to our recruitment team to find out if this is possible in the current working environment.

Job Title: Lead Front End Developer – Defence

Work arrangement: Hybrid

Area of work: Software Engineering

Employment type: Regular

Position type: Professional

Location: United Kingdom

Company: IBM

Shift: General (daytime)