Job Description

Great ideas come from different minds. That’s why we bring together engineers, scientists, analysts, and creatives from every background — and give them the trust, tools, and freedom to make a difference. What connects us is the mission: solving meaningful problems and building capability that protects what matters most.

And as the challenges evolve, so do we — working on the technologies that will shape tomorrow, not just today.

Great ideas come from different minds. That’s why we bring together engineers, scientists, analysts, and creatives from every background - and give them the trust, tools, and freedom to make a difference. What connects us is the mission: solving meaningful problems and building capability that protects what matters most.
And as the challenges evolve, so do we - working on the technologies that will shape tomorrow, not just today.
Join our growing team and help strengthen the UK’s safety and resilience.
We’re a leading technology and engineering company supporting customers across National Security, Defence and Intelligence, delivering systems that operate in the most demanding and sensitive environments.

We are looking for a Software Engineer with strong experience in Java, Spring Boot and big data engineering to join our engineering team.
The role will involve designing, developing and maintaining scalable software and data-processing solutions, with a strong focus on automation, reliability and operational excellence. You will work across the software development lifecycle and collaborate closely with software engineers, data engineers, SREs and product teams.
This is an ideal role for an engineer who enjoys solving complex technical problems and working with data-intensive, highly reliable systems.

Key Responsibilities
• Design, develop, test and maintain scalable applications and services using Java and Spring Boot.
• Develop and maintain big data processing solutions using Hadoop and related technologies.
• Build and maintain reliable, efficient data-processing pipelines.
• Work with large and complex datasets to support data processing and analytics requirements.
• Apply software engineering best practices, including code reviews, automated testing and version control.
• Use GitLab for source control, collaboration and CI/CD activities.
• Automate application and infrastructure configuration and deployment using Ansible.
• Apply SRE principles to improve the reliability, availability, performance and scalability of production services.
• Monitor and troubleshoot applications and data platforms, identifying and resolving issues effectively.
• Participate in incident investigation, root-cause analysis and continuous service improvement.
• Identify opportunities to automate manual processes and improve engineering efficiency.
• Collaborate with Product Managers and other technical stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver effective solutions.
• Contribute to technical documentation, engineering standards and continuous improvement.

Essential Skills & Experience
• Professional software development experience using Java.
• Strong experience developing applications and services using Spring Boot.
• Experience with big data engineering, including large-scale data processing and data pipelines.
• Hands-on experience with Hadoop or comparable distributed data-processing technologies.
• Understanding of data analytics and experience working with large or complex datasets.
• Experience with Ansible or comparable infrastructure/configuration automation technologies.
• Experience using GitLab, including source control and ideally CI/CD pipelines.
• Understanding and practical application of SRE principles, including production support, monitoring, troubleshooting and service reliability.
• Strong understanding of software development lifecycle and engineering best practices.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to work effectively within a collaborative, multidisciplinary engineering team.

Desirable Skills & Experience
• Experience with Apache Pig or similar data-processing technologies.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure or GCP.
• Experience with Docker and/or Kubernetes.
• Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience with monitoring, logging and observability platforms.
• Experience with relational and/or NoSQL databases.
• Experience designing and operating highly available distributed systems.
• Experience working in an Agile/Scrum environment.

Why Roke
You’ll work with smart, supportive people on projects that genuinely matter, in an environment that values technical excellence, collaboration and continuous learning. We invest in your growth, value diverse thinking and offer flexible working alongside a strong benefits package (including 30 days’ holiday plus bank holidays). Roke combines a 70+ year heritage with the agility to make a real impact.

Location:
Based in Gloucester and customer sites for high side integration/deployment. Limited hybrid working may be possible, subject to project needs and may vary between assignments.

Clearance:
Valid SC clearance is required for this post. If you are eligible but don’t hold SC, please explore other engineering roles via Roke’s Careers Page. Eligibility details can be found on gov.uk.

The Next Step

Click apply, submitting an up-to-date CV. We look forward to hearing from you.

Take a look around the company https://www.roke.co.uk/