Staff Software Engineer in Cardiff

Department: Engineering

Location: Cardiff

Description is the UK's first comparison platform for car insurance. We’ve been helping customers since 2002 by empowering them to make better decisions around insurance and financial services. Our mission is simple: take away the confusion when comparing financial products and services to help you save time and money. We’re part of RVU, a group of online brands (including Uswitch, Tempcover) that empowers people to make confident decisions across a range of household services. RVU's purpose is to simplify complex marketplaces with intuitive and accessible applications that genuinely improve people's lives. Saving a few hundred pounds a year on bills makes a fundamental difference to vulnerable people who sometimes have to choose between paying for utilities or groceries. Our platforms serve millions of users a month, process thousands of comparisons a day, and drive hundreds of complex integrations with vastly different partners. We’re a tech-driven business that focuses on agile delivery and cross-functional product teams. We are creating the next generation of comparison platforms, and as we scale we are looking for passionate, empathetic engineers to build highly performant, accessible, and beautiful consumer experiences to facilitate switching and comparisons on the web.

What You Will Be Responsible For

• Excellence: Work alongside established & experienced engineering teams, whilst supporting and growing the organisation's understanding & utilisation of modern technology.
• Collaboration: Work with various cross-functional disciplines across the organisation to make ideas a reality, whilst taking an active role in shaping and delivering the ongoing technical vision of the organisation alongside your peers.
• Autonomy: Authority over technical strategy, decisions and implementation approach, so you can deliver using practices that align with your preferred ways of working.
• Data Driven: Utilise rich logs, metrics, and data to monitor and improve system performance & reliability.
• Culture: Enhancing a diverse engineering culture by taking part in various technical catch ups, working groups and All Hands.
• Experience: Enrich RVU's perspective by sharing your experience, knowledge & expertise in a continuous learning environment. Proactively identify opportunities for improvement across the organisation. Manage your time effectively between team and org level contributions. Rotate around the business to build relationships and act as a multiplier.

What We Look For In You

• Understand, assess and effectively apply modern data architectures (dimensional model, data mesh, data lake).
• Experience in applying and using data observability methods effectively.
• Experience in modern software development practices (agile, CI/CD, DevOps, infrastructure as code, observability).
• Experience applying DORA metrics to Data Products.
• Experience with Domain driven design, Event driven architecture and Contract driven development.
• Experience and understanding of designing data products and versioning.
• Proven technical leadership and managing relationships with multiple cross-departmental stakeholders.
• Extensive experience designing, implementing and maintaining robust data pipelines and transformation processes.
• Ability to understand detailed technical requirements and explain technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders alike.
• High level of proficiency developing applications using most of the following: Strong knowledge of SQL and Python programming.
• Extensive experience working within a cloud environment.
• Experience with big data technologies (e.g. Spark, Databricks, Delta Lake, BigQuery).
• Experience with alternative data technologies (e.g. duckdb, polars, daft).
• Familiarity with eventing technologies (Event Hubs, Kafka etc.).
• Deep understanding of file formats and their behaviour such as parquet, delta and iceberg.

What We Offer

We want to give you a great work environment; contribute back to both your personal and professional development; and give you great benefits to make your time at RVU even more enjoyable. Some of these benefits include:

• Employer matching pension up to 7.5%.
• Hybrid approach of in-office and remote working, and a "Work from Home" budget to help contribute towards a great work environment at home.
• Excellent maternity, paternity and adoption leave policy, for those key moments in your life.
• 25 days holiday (increasing to 30 days) + 2 days "My Time" per year.
• Up to 30 days per year "working from anywhere".
• A healthy learning and training budget.
• Electric vehicles scheme.
• Health insurance.
• Access to the Calm and Peppy app for physical and mental health.
• Regular events - from team socials to company-wide events with insightful external speakers, we want to make sure our colleagues continue to feel connected.