WIREDGOV

Here at NCFE we have a team full of talented individuals with a whole range of skills. Whether that’s being the brains behind our technology innovation, communicating with our customers or handling our marketing activity, there’s always something going on and a story to tell. But what is it really like to work here?

In a new mini-series, we’ve been shining the spotlight on our IT team as part of a #TechTakeover. Last time we heard from our senior software developer Shaun and this time our dev ops lead Richard Grant is revealing what his role is like here at NCFE.

My role at NCFE is still a relatively new one so it’s constantly evolving and I’m currently working on shaping how my day-to-day will look. At the core, my role is to work within the delivery team which involves collaborating with software developers and testers that are using the likes of the Full Microsoft Stack and Microsoft’s .Net Core framework to deliver projects effectively.

We use an agile framework here for our projects and one of my roles is a scrum master, meaning I effectively help members of the team to progress with their day-to-day, ensure that everyone’s communicating with each other and working with them to solve any issues they are facing.

All of this falls into my wider remit of having the responsibility to direct how we’re going to get software deployed in an effective way. That can involve everything from creating and maintaining delivery pipelines, setting up permissions as to who can do what, monitoring costs, checking code security and ensuring the systems are secure, and getting together with teams wider than the project to have their input as well.

It’s important for me to bring together other areas of the business beyond the IT team so they understand what we’re doing and how we do it. This involves having regular chats with product owners or other stakeholders in the projects that we’re delivering.

I’m also looking at unifying our backlogs to bring everything together in one place, I regularly conduct code reviews, consider our branching strategies and how we store and utilise the source code that we have. In the remaining time I have, I also manage a few people in the team providing help and guidance with any issues that they have.

Does NCFE sound like somewhere you’d like to work? We’re on the lookout for talented full stack developers to work across both front and back end solutions. Send over your details to talent@ncfe.org.uk to express your interest.