Senior Engineer - Digital Innovation

Post Title

Senior Engineer - Digital Innovation

SBU/Department

Library and Computing Services/Digital Innovation Team

FTE

1 FTE (working 37 hours per week)

Duration of Contract

Fixed term for 2 years

Salary

UH8 £46,049pa to £58,225pa by annual increments on achieving designated skills and experience

Annual Leave

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

Location

College Lane Campus, Hatfield

We are looking for a Senior Engineer – Digital Innovation to join our Digital Innovation team and own the platforms that power the university experience. You will lead meaningful change, designing and delivering digital services that directly support students, staff and the future of education, with clear, real-world impact.

You will work at the centre of an agile, collaborative team, shaping solutions from concept through to delivery. This is a hands-on role where you will influence technical direction, work closely with stakeholders and drive improvements across a complex digital ecosystem. You will work with modern, emerging and open-source technologies, evolving our platforms to be more scalable, resilient and user-centred.

We offer flexible working and strong opportunities for career growth. You will mentor engineers, raise engineering standards and contribute to a high-performing team culture, while delivering solutions that make a lasting difference to how the university operates and how students experience their education.

You will work with our current tech stack, including Ruby on Rails, TypeScript and Go; Angular and React; Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL; and GitLab for version control, collaboration and CI/CD pipelines, gaining hands-on experience with modern tools and practices.

Main duties and responsibilities

You will lead the design, development and ongoing improvement of digital services and enterprise applications, ensuring they are reliable, secure and well-integrated within the university’s wider digital ecosystem. You will work closely with stakeholders to understand and prioritise requirements, translate them into practical user-centre solutions and oversee their delivery through agile practices. You will take ownership of key systems, manage their performance and continuous improvement and contribute to project planning, procurement and service design. Alongside this, you will mentor colleagues, promote strong engineering standards and help drive continuous improvement across both delivery processes and the wider organisation.

Skills and experience required

We are looking for an experienced software engineer with Substantial proven experience of developing and implementing robust digital applications and solutions in a large, networked environment at an appropriate level of responsibility. You will have experience applying testing and quality assurance practices including unit, integration, and regression testing, ensuring appropriate test coverage and high standards of software quality alongside experience working with relational databases and designing integrations using APIs.

You will bring a strong understanding of frontend interface design, usability, accessibility, and user experience principles and ensuring solutions meet organisational and regulatory accessibility standards. You will also have experience of software configuration and support in the following areas: access, permissions and security; user-defined fields, lists of values; data validation and reconciliation; online processes and collaborative workflow; web portal functions; and business intelligence reporting. You should have good communication skills, be able to work with a wide range of stakeholders and be able to support, motivate, and positively influence the team by providing technical leadership, encouragement and constructive feedback.

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. 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

Reference Number

REQ000721

Date advert placed

06 May 2026

Our vision is to transform lives: At the University of Hertfordshire we are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion and building a diverse community. Towards that aim we particularly encourage applications from candidates likely to be underrepresented within Library and Computing Services. These include people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, disabled people, LGBTQI+ people and women in grades UH7 and above. We offer a range of employee benefits including generous annual leave, flexible location opportunities within the UK, discounted Sports Village memberships and free Active Staff sessions, personal and professional development and family-friendly policies. #GoHerts

Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme

Disability Confident

About Disability Confident

A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. For more details please go to Disability Confident.