Senior II Software Engineer

About FT Product & Technology

Here at the FT, gold-standard journalism is just the beginning. 500-people strong, our Product and Tech team keeps us ahead of the ever-changing digital landscape by delivering cutting-edge products to over one million digital subscribers every day. Our plans for growth rely on a diverse, dedicated and dynamic group of product, tech, delivery and data specialists - everyone’s welcome in this friendly, forward-thinking team. And with entrepreneurial spirit, intelligence and opportunity at every turn, there’s no limits to where your FT career will take you.

About FT Professional

As part of the Financial Times, one of the world's most respected brands and news sources, we at FT Professional work to help our customers get more from Financial Times journalism – through additional resources, curated news, and action-oriented tools.

As part of our Professional products portfolio Content Analytics and Advanced Research Product Team is looking for a Lead Engineer.

The team builds data capabilities to power enhanced discovery, exploration and delivery of FT information for B2B users.

• Mission: To give B2B users the data and tools to enhance their analysis of events, trends, and connections so they can make decisions with confidence.
• Vision: B2B users of the FT can optimally harness the full extent of the FTs information to meet the varying needs of their specific job-related tasks and workflows.

Our technology

Here’s a list of things we use a lot. It’s not exhaustive, but gives you a taste of what our stack and tools look like:

• Node.js
• React (JSX); Sass; Next.js
• Heroku
• Postgres
• AWS: IAM; CloudFormation; S3; DynamoDB
• Fastly
• Github; CircleCI

While we don’t expect you to have worked with all of these, it will be a bonus for us if you have worked with some of them.

What do we look for in our Lead Software Engineers?

This role is a Senior 2 level engineering position according to our competency framework. Put simply, Senior 2 is a tech lead and people management level role in FT Professional.

Responsibilities and main duties

• Working directly with product owners and senior stakeholders to fully shape solutions from inception to deployment and beyond
• Working within (with an opportunity to lead) a team of engineers in an agile delivery team
• Designing and implementing low maintenance, well monitored, secure and scalable solutions to customer problems
• Designing, build and operate solutions, from cradle to grave, which meet both functional and non-functional KPIs
• Understand and play an active part in designing the architecture, tooling and release cycle processes used by the engineering teams across Product & Technology
• Contribute to company-wide processes, frameworks and guidelines
• Develop a close relationship with our customers and provide operational support

Role requirements

Essential

• Good command of written and spoken English
• Highly proficient in at least one of the programming languages relevant to the FT: Java, Go or Node.js
• Will have a track record of delivering well engineered solutions using current technologies and best practices such as SOLID, TDD, CI/CD and pair programming
• An active member of the broader technology community with an understand of current leading trends
• Experience working as part of an Agile delivery team, using methodologies like Scrum and Kanban
• Good understanding of the principles and trade-offs of a microservices architecture
• Good working experience of at least one cloud infrastructure, ideally AWS
• Comfortable working in a Linux environment

Desirable

• Experience in the role of technical lead of a multi-disciplined group of engineers in an agile delivery team
• Experience working within an environment where operational support and monitoring of code and systems is part of the culture (DevOps)
• Experience designing and developing RESTful APIs
• Ability to accurately monitor and analyse system performance using tools like Grafana
• Will hold an industry certification in a key platform, tool or domain used within Engineering at the FT. This could be any relevant certification but currently we are recommending it's an AWS Associate certificate

Benefits

• 25 days of leave, increasing to 30 after two years. We also offer additional flexi-days at 30% pay.
• Pension scheme: the FT will double your contribution up to 18% total
• Free gym membership via GymPass, or subsidised access to Nuffield Health
• Enhanced maternity & paternity packages
• Other schemes include: childcare vouchers, give as you earn, cycle to work, travel loans, healthcare, dental, life assurance
• Full details of our benefits can be found here.

How we work

We offer a strict 35 hour working week to all staff in our London office. Our hybrid setup means staff are expected to come into the office 2 days a week on average. Each team is given some choice on how they organise themselves and may set specific days for the team to be in the office, but broadly speaking, this will be no more than two days a week.

Our office is located across the street from St. Paul's Cathedral and is easily accessible from all corners of London. There are the main train terminals such as Liverpool Street, Moorgate, Blackfriars, City Thameslink or Waterloo all situated within walking distance or there are several tube stations within a few mins walk such as Mansion House (District or Circle line), St. Paul's (Central line), Bank (Central or Waterloo & City line) or Barbican (Central, Hammersmith & City or Metropolitan lines).

Our commitment to diversity and inclusion in the workplace

The FT is committed to providing an inclusive working environment for all. We are an equal opportunities employer who seeks to recruit and appoint the best talent regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We believe that a supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves at work and have the flexibility they need to meet their personal needs.

Please let us know if you require any adjustments as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements, or have any questions, please contact a member of our HR team who will be happy to help.

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