Software Developer, Senior ICT Specialist 2026: how the civil service competition works

The Software Developer, Senior ICT Specialist at Higher Executive Officer level competition is open on publicjobs (Vacancy ID 10109), and it closes at 3pm on Wednesday 11 November 2026. It recruits experienced developers onto a panel that will fill posts across the Civil Service, most of them in Dublin. This post sets out who is eligible, what the booklet says the board needs to see, and where good developers tend to undersell themselves on the form.

I coach candidates for civil service and public sector competitions, including specialists applying for management grades, and I spent years in the Civil Service myself, entering the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as a Third Secretary and leaving as a First Secretary. The facts below come from the publicjobs vacancy page and the candidate information booklet, read on 26 October 2026.

Key facts at a glance

Competition	Software Developer, Senior ICT Specialist at Higher Executive Officer Level in the Civil Service
Vacancy ID	10109
Closing date	3pm, Wednesday 11 November 2026
Grade	Higher Executive Officer
Starting salary	€60,029
Annual leave	29 days to start
Location	Mostly Dublin, with some regional posts
Contract	Permanent, full-time
Interviews	Expected from December 2026
Apply at	publicjobs

What does a Senior ICT Specialist software developer do?

A Senior ICT Specialist software developer builds and maintains the digital services that government departments and agencies provide to the public, to businesses and to their own staff. The booklet lists software for websites, web applications, desktop, batch jobs and mobile apps, and says successful candidates will be lead members of a technical team. The vacancy page names the kind of work involved: the National Childcare Scheme, interactions with the Revenue Commissioners, the census, Driver Licence Online, employment permits and the gov.ie portal, all in support of Ireland's EU Digital Decade 2030 targets.

Your duties will depend on the Department or agency you are assigned to, and the booklet says so plainly. The grade is Higher Executive Officer, which is a middle management grade, so you are recruited as a developer who will also lead.

This is a separate competition from the main Higher Executive Officer 2026 competition, which closed in September. It has its own booklet, its own eligibility and its own panel.

Who is eligible for the Senior ICT Specialist competition?

Eligibility for the Senior ICT Specialist competition depends on your qualification and your years of hands-on software development experience. You need to meet one of four routes on or before the closing date:

1. A Level 7 major award on the National Framework of Qualifications in a relevant computing or computational discipline, and at least three years' relevant hands-on software development experience.
2. A Level 8 honours degree with computing or computational modules taken in the final year, and at least three years' relevant experience.
3. A major award at Level 6 or above in a relevant computing or computational discipline, such as a Post Leaving Cert course or a FIT Tech Apprenticeship, and at least five years' directly relevant hands-on software development experience.
4. At least two industry-recognised certifications, one of them in software development, and at least five years' relevant experience.

The booklet asks for experience "from your employment to date" and says it should be appropriate to software development, in particular your background in coding. It does not limit that experience to the public service. Check your own record against the routes before you start the form.

What will the board be looking for?

The booklet lists eight things candidates must be able to show during the process, and they are the clearest guide to what the board will mark:

1. Excellent coding skills, and the ability to deliver well written, efficient code.
2. Translating user requirements into elegant coding solutions, and analysing and solving difficult coding problems.
3. Achievements from your career to date where you delivered ICT or digital solutions, or parts of them, to the benefit of your organisation's business.
4. Managing a team of ICT, digital and business specialists effectively, with a focus on continuous improvement and service delivery.
5. Taking the initiative, with a proactive approach to introducing ICT and digital solutions.
6. Excellent communication skills, and being comfortable working in and at times leading a team or project group.
7. Strong analytical thinking, leadership, communication and networking skills.
8. Organising and prioritising work in a busy environment, with competing demands from different work areas.

The booklet also refers to the Key Competencies for effective performance in the role, but it does not name them, so treat these eight statements as your brief.

Two of the eight are about code. The other six are about delivering for the business, leading people, taking the initiative, communicating and managing your own workload. Your technical record makes you eligible. The rest of the form is where you show the board you can work at Higher Executive Officer level.

The booklet also lists the technical areas the role draws on: front-end frameworks, client-side security and performance, server-side MVC frameworks, APIs and high load, SQL and NoSQL database design and tuning, languages such as Java, Python or C#, containers, server configuration, and cloud stacks such as AWS or Azure. Use that list to decide which parts of your own experience to name on the form.

Why strong developers can undersell themselves on the form

Developers are trained to describe systems precisely: the architecture, the stack, the constraint, the fix. That is the right habit for a design document and a risky one for this form. Assume the board includes people who are not developers, and remember that it can only mark what is on the page.

A paragraph that explains a migration accurately, without saying what you decided, who you brought with you and what changed for the people using the service, gives the board very little to credit. The experience is there, but it has not reached the form in a shape the board can mark. My post on how a shortlisting board reads an application form explains what the board is doing when it scores a form.

Five things I see in specialist applications

These come up again and again when I work with specialists applying for management grades. None of them is about ability. All of them are about what reaches the page.

1. The stack instead of the decision. The answer lists the languages, frameworks and tools, and the candidate's own choices are hard to find. The board wants to know what you chose, why you chose it, and what happened as a result.
2. No business outcome. The booklet asks for solutions delivered to the benefit of your organisation's business. A go-live date is a milestone. A form that moved from paper to online, a processing time that fell from weeks to days, or fewer calls to a helpdesk are outcomes the board can credit.
3. Leadership left out because the title was not "manager". Tech leads mentor, review code, set standards, unblock people and settle technical disagreements. Candidates often leave all of that out because they had no direct reports. It is leadership, and the booklet asks for it.
4. "We" instead of "I". Software is built by teams, and developers are rightly modest about it. But a sentence without you in it cannot be credited to you. My post on I-centred language covers this in detail.
5. Jargon a generalist cannot follow. Acronyms, product names and internal system names mean a great deal to you and very little to a board. Spell them out, or say what the system does.

Any of these may cost a strong candidate marks for things they have done in the job. All five can be fixed before the form goes in.

How to build your examples for the Senior ICT Specialist application form

Start with an inventory, not the form. List the projects from the last three to five years where you were responsible for part of the outcome. For each one, note what the users or the business needed, what you built or changed, the decisions you made and the options you turned down, who you led or mentored, what got in the way, and what was different afterwards. Most people find it hard to recall their best examples on demand, and my post on building an example bank shows how to gather them before you need them.

Then map your examples to the eight statements in the booklet, aiming for a different example for each. Make sure at least one shows you leading other people, and at least one shows you handling competing demands.

Write each answer using the STAR method: Situation, Task, Action, Result. Keep the Situation short, because the board cannot mark it. Use the Task to say what your own role was and what you were there to achieve. Put most of your words into the Action, in the first person, with real verbs: designed, chose, rebuilt, negotiated, mentored, escalated. Finish with a Result the board can check, such as a number, a date, or a service that went live.

Before you submit, run through the application form checklist. Complete every section of the Progress Tracker and then submit, because the booklet says applications that are not submitted will not progress.

What happens after the closing date?

After the closing date, publicjobs may shortlist on the application form, and only shortlisted candidates go forward. Not everyone who applies will be interviewed. The booklet says that where a competition attracts a large number of eligible candidates, there is a scored assessment of the information on the application form, candidates are ranked, and they are invited forward in batches.

The booklet lists the methods that may be used after that, including online questionnaires, a preliminary interview, a pre-recorded video interview, a presentation, a report-writing exercise, a work sample and a final competitive interview, which may be held remotely. It does not name a specific coding test, so watch for the details in any invitation you receive. Interviews are expected from December 2026.

Successful candidates are placed on a panel in order of merit, and posts are filled from it as they arise across the Civil Service.

Senior ICT Specialist interview questions to practice with

I have written these practice questions from the eight statements in the booklet. They are not questions from any board, and the real ones will differ, but if you can answer each of these with a strong example, you are well prepared.

1. Tell us about a piece of software you built that made a measurable difference to the people using it.
2. Describe a difficult technical problem you solved. How did you work out what was wrong?
3. Tell us about a time a user or business owner asked for something that would not have worked as described. What did you do?
4. Describe a time you led a team or a piece of work where people disagreed about the technical approach.
5. Tell us about a change you introduced, on your own initiative, to how your team builds or releases software.
6. How would you explain a technical risk in one of your systems to a senior manager with no technical background?
7. Tell us about a time you had more work than you could deliver. How did you decide what came first?
8. How do you keep your technical skills current, and what have you changed in your work as a result?

Answer them out loud, not in your head. Reading notes silently is not practice. The free interview preparation checklist sets out a preparation plan you can start before any invitation arrives.

Where support helps

Most developers I work with have the experience. What they want help with is choosing the right examples, getting their own decisions onto the page in words a generalist board can follow, and saying it all clearly under pressure. That is what each of these is for:

1. Finding and building your examples. A session to work out which of your projects and decisions to use, and which of the eight statements each one answers. Useful if you can see your technical work clearly but not where your leadership fits.
2. Application form review. A written guidance note on your draft, covering general feedback and feedback on each answer, followed by a session to talk it through. Useful if you have a draft and want to know whether a board would credit you at Higher Executive Officer level.
3. Interview preparation. A mock competency-based interview against the requirements in your booklet, with a written guidance note afterwards. Useful once you are shortlisted, and you can read what a session involves first.

In both of the first two, the form stays in your own words. I do not write or rewrite application forms; I help you find and shape what you already have. To book, or to ask which would suit you, email me at sarah@dedico.ie.

If you would rather prepare on your own, everything linked in this post is free and it is the same method I use with clients.

Frequently asked questions