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Autonomous Mobility is part of the Advanced Technology division of Ocado Technology.
Ocado Technology is one of the largest technology organisations in Europe, with 2,500 people in multiple countries building cutting-edge software and automation for our grocery retailer partners.
Advanced Technology focuses on the development of specifically complex and emergent technologies that are strategically critical to the future of Ocado. It functions as a collection of small, highly independent teams with the dynamism and ambition of a start-up, while benefiting from the tools and resources of a major tech company.
In Autonomous Mobility, our vision is to reimagine the ‘last mile’, making grocery delivery cheaper, easier and greener than going to the shop yourself. We are working with autonomy and vehicle partners to develop self-driving goods vehicles for use on roads, around distribution facilities, and eventually from the kerb to customers’ homes. Self-driving vehicles are one of the most challenging and exciting technologies of our lifetimes, and logistics is expected to be one of the first commercially viable applications of this technology.
The Cloud Software team is responsible for all the cloud software that enables the interaction between all the systems involved in running a fleet of autonomous vehicles, including the Ocado Smart Platform. The team interacts with internal and external stakeholders to negotiate interfaces, communications and architecture. This is a very exciting greenfields project that has regular integration milestones to see the fruits of your labour in the big picture.
A software engineer on this team is responsible for taking requirements from product managers, breaking them down into technical requirements and implementing them in code. All feature code is developed on a separate branch and a merge request is created for the feature to become part of the shared codebase. Developers are responsible for creating merge requests, reviewing merge requests, as well as giving feedback on implementation details where appropriate.
All members of the team are responsible for collaborating with their peers; both in terms of collective good through sprint planning, sprint reviews and retrospective, as well as supporting their team mates. Team members are responsible for staying aware of the latest trends in software engineering and sharing the knowledge through knowledge sharing sessions. This team is also collaborating with external companies through regular integration iterations, milestones and demos.
The team has stand-ups 2-3 times a week while working well-defined pieces of work defined in Jira - organised into 2 week sprints. The teams enjoy regular pair programming sessions, and participate in department-wide knowledge sharing sessions across a broad range of topics. There are less meetings with a focus on quality rather than quantity. When you are involved in a working group, there might be more meetings, but these are either online from home or in well equipped meeting rooms or other collaboration spaces.
The company has moved to a hybrid working pattern - aiming to average spending 40% of our time in the office. These are coordinated so that you can bump into the rest of your team and build great relationships and ways of working. Also, we try to keep big meetings on days that we work from home. There are core hours during the day when we expect most people to be available, however there is a fair amount of flexibility with start and end times. There are also sports clubs, games clubs and regular use of the table tennis table. Quite a few members of the team like to be in the office more often for the sense of camaraderie and social interaction, although there is no expectation to come in more than the designated 2 days per week.
On top of the hybrid working and flexible hours, there is coordinated “no-office time” as well as 30 days of “work from anywhere”. No-office time is 4 weeks over August and 2 weeks over Christmas when you are not expected to be in the office unless you want to be. With the work from anywhere policy, you can book time to work in a large number of countries. This is fantastic for visiting family and friends in other countries, or extending city breaks to get a real sense of somewhere.
We have recently kitted-out offices within walking distance to Welwyn Garden City station. There is also a shuttle bus if you prefer not to walk (or it is raining). The trainline runs from London, stopping at various places including Finsbury Park and Kings Cross. There is also a service that comes from the north that includes Cambridge and Stevenage. There are also close-by villages and towns of various sizes including St Albans, Hertford, Harpenden and Hatfield. There is a company subsidised private bus service operated by Zeelo from various locations including St Albans.
The company will provide you with the tools that you need to do your job. This includes your choice of laptop and operating system from the supported catalogue - Macbook Pro, Ubuntu or Windows; although for this team, Windows is not recommended. Ocado will also support you in being comfortable in your home office - desk, monitor, etc. There is all the infrastructure in place to help you do your job: Gitlab, Slack, intelliJ (licences available, if it is your weapon of choice), Google Workplace, etc.
We want you to want to spend time working in our Development Centres. We believe we can create a welcoming space which is conducive to collaboration and social interaction, with well understood and purposeful use of space. Our building within the Bessemer Road campus includes an open plan kitchen including bean-to-cup coffee, a selection of teas, and a toaster with free bread and bagels. Around the corner from the kitchen is a meeting room with a table tennis table, and there is a collection of board games available if that’s your thing. There is also a subsidised canteen offering hot and cold food on-site.
Across the car park is our workshop that is purposefully kitted-out for developing the hardware that is needed for the project. Equipment include 3d printers, laser cutters, electronics lab, lathes, … , and a foosball table. There are hack evenings where teammates can learn how to use the equipment, and occasionally we have hack competition days too.
Members of the team’s opinions are respected and valued - regardless of their level of seniority. They enjoy solving interesting problems - technical and process. They love to learn new things and to share their knowledge with others. Members of the team are excited about cross-disciplinary collaboration as well as the opportunity to work on software and / or hardware (if desired).
People on the team are proud of their work and love to share what they have done (or learned). They enjoy interacting with other internal and external teams; and are friendly and sociable. The team sets themselves high standards and gives feedback in a caring and constructive way.
We are hiring across the spectrum of experience levels and skills as we have multiple positions available. The backend is written in Java (utilising Spring Boot), and the pair programming interview will be conducted using Java. During this interview, you will be expected to read, understand and modify some code, however you will not be expected to have a full working knowledge of the entire Java API. The front-end is written in React & Typescript, but we are not looking to have an exclusively front-end engineer at this time. Obviously, only for the more senior candidates we will expect some awareness and experience of modern software development processes and principles; including some experience in a production environment.
We are looking for people who also have strong written and verbal communication skills so that they can interact effectively with their teammates as well as internal and external stakeholders. Successful candidates should have a history of achievement and excellent problem-solving skills; reliant on core engineering understanding together with common sense.
You have a relentless thirst for knowledge - choosing to learn from courses, books, experience and feedback. You have the ability and desire to share subject matter expertise and knowledge cogently for the communal good.
You are logical and take a structured approach, including in situations of ambiguity.
You have a bias for action, cooperation and trust. You aspire to contribute actively and enthusiastically; utilising high levels of creativity and divergent thinking, where appropriate, to solve complex problems. You warmly nurture your colleagues through feedback and support.
Our employee benefits are designed for you, we care about people and we’ve ensured we have a wealth of benefits that focus on your well-being. We regularly review our benefits to ensure we are supporting our employees appropriately. Currently, we offer technically stretching work, a competitive salary and;