Job Description:
Reach’s new customer value strategy puts our customers and their experience at the heart of everything we do.
We are looking for a Software Engineer to join an agile development team that supports our infrastructure which is in Amazon Web Services and as such we make great use of the different capabilities it provides. Our frontend stack is mainly in vanilla JavaScript. Our supporting services are built with the appropriate tool as decided by the team. As some examples, we have services in Node.js running on AWS technologies such as AWS Lambda, DynamoDB and ECS. We are strong believers in DevOps principles and infrastructure as code, and we are continuously trying to improve in that direction
Reports to a Technical Engineering Manager. Works with other software engineers, project managers, designers and QA team members.
The ideal candidate for this position should have strong development experience either backend or frontend or fullstack. You will have experience working collaboratively within a web development team with a non-hierarchical structure, be self-directed and happy to work on your own initiative
This role can be 100% home based or hybrid. Our HQ is in Canary Wharf and we are happy for you to come in to meet with the team when needed.
Key Responsibilities
- Acquisition of users from organic search, newsletters, direct registration and social media.
- Features that encourage users to engage and move around our products.
- Features that encourage users of Reach plc's digital news products to interact with editorial staff and each other.
- Commenting on articles and interactive web chats but with the potential to expand into related features.
- Tools to enable our editorial team to build relationships with users via two-way conversations, encouraging user loyalty and increasing return visits.
- Tracking and understanding user journeys across multiple visits, from discovery to loyalty
- Optimising the promotion of features that drive engagement and loyalty.
- Writing maintainable, tested and compliant code.
- Provide secure, scalable solutions with proper monitoring and logging.
- Provide information by analysing and summarising business and development needs.
- Participate in code reviews and guide software engineers to implement the latest programming techniques and tools.
- Mentor junior software engineers
- The Ideal Candidate
- Must have for Frontend developer
- Experience with frontend technologies - HTML, CSS and preprocessors, templating, client-side JavaScript (including vanilla JavaScript or React)
- Must have for Backend developer
- Development experience with server side coding. (we mainly use NodeJs and Javascript)
Must have
- An understanding of HTTP, caching and how the web works
- Understanding of the different JavaScript versions. Main features of ES6.
- Working understanding of front end build tools. e.g. Babel, Gulp, Grunt, Webpack
- Familiarity with automated testing at different parts of the test pyramid
Could have
- Optimising performance to scale to handle large quantities of content data and high volumes of traffic across numerous websites
- Familiarity with Database (we mainly use DynamoDB, PostgreSQL and MySQL)
- Java experience would be a plus
- A confident and articulate communicator capable of inspiring strong collaboration within an organisation and between teams.
- A self-starter with a can-do, will-do attitude
Professional development experience (most relevant experience with Javascript / Node.js)
- Experience of automated testing at different levels of the test pyramid
- Ideally, we are looking for a Fullstack developer, but a Frontend or Backend developer with aspirations to become Full Stack is also welcome to apply.
- An understanding and preference for Functional Programming is highly desirable, however again we are happy to teach you this otherwise.
- We use AWS extensively, and we provision our own resources (using Cloud formation), so some knowledge of AWS will help. We expect to mentor you in this aspect though.
Package Description
We are offering a competitive salary and benefits including;
- 100% home based or Hybrid
- 25 days holiday
- Healthcare & Dental plan
- Contributory pension scheme
- Holiday purchase scheme
- Free wellbeing apps and coaching support
- Lots of high street discounts!
Reach plc believes diversity brings benefits for our customers, our business and our people. This is why we are committed to being an inclusive employer and encourage applications from all suitable applicants irrespective of background, circumstances, age, disability, gender identity, ethnicity, religion or belief and sexual orientation. We will be reviewing applications as they are received so please don't delay in submitting your application.
