Website Developer

We are Forestry England.

We live and breathe forests.

Join us. We\’re foresters, professionals and experts. We are a passionate team who love to share our enthusiasm and want to make a positive difference for you and the environment.

Together, were using our scale and expertise to grow the nations forests for everyone. Were already adapting our landscapes for tomorrow, and getting stuff done today, like creating amazing places and experiences for you to enjoy. We\’re providing vital homes for wildlife, making our air cleaner to breathe and producing sustainable timber.

What You\’ll Be Doing

Forestry Englands website is at the heart of our business – providing a quality user journey for all of our audiences, from mountain bikers and runners, to families, volunteers and timber buyers. As part of the web team, you will be at the core of shaping the website and influencing its development to drive more people to the nations forests.

In this role, you will lead the technical development of the Forestry England website. You will be responsible for the website\’s ongoing maintenance and technical enhancement, ensuring it is available, secure and accessible. To do this, you\’ll also have the support of a technical agency and a website manager, and you\’ll deliver small development projects through this route too.

Drupal development skills are key to this role. We\’ll expect you to have significant experience of managing Drupal websites, and of keeping up-to-date with what Drupal can offer. Beyond these skills, you will have experience of working collaboratively with stakeholders to refine requirements, and of building designs or prototypes for review. You\’ll also have experience of building a development roadmap and communicating priorities to the wider business.

This role also supports other users to use the website and you\’ll have experience of successfully explaining technical information to non-technical colleagues.

You will be the internal technical expert and a willingness to troubleshoot other components, such as API\’s and embeds and supporting platforms will be welcome.

Please see the job description below for more information and details about what we need from you.

Where youll work

Forestry England\’s digital team are predominantly based in the national office, in Bristol. Other locations for this role will be considered, but you must be willing to travel to the Bristol office at least twice a month, on a Tuesday.

Key Responsibility & Accountabilities

• Engage in project assessment and scoping to help ensure that appropriate technical possibilities are explored
• take an active role in the design process from understanding requirements to reviewing and challenging wireframes, prototypes and final designs
• create high-quality, accessible and responsive functionality by working to industry standards and through team participation and code reviews
• ensure Forestry Englands website, and associated technology are always fully operational
• identify further opportunities for developing the website in-line with strategic objectives
• keep abreast of new web and mobile technologies, recommending best practice, suggesting areas for improvement and advising the organisation accordingly
• support internal teams to manage the website using the content management system
• manage external development from a technical and administrative point of view, provided by a digital agency

Skills, Knowledge & Experience

Essential professional and technical experience

• Experience of recreation management with an emphasis on safety, efficiency, and excellent customer service
• delivering large, professional websites and digital projects, using Drupal
• commercial experience working with LAMP / LEMP technology stack
• full-stack development experience (OO PHP, HTML, CSS, JS)
• experience using Git in a team environment
• excellent communication skills
• you must be comfortable communicating effectively with technical and non-technical team members, stakeholders and external partners
• full lifecycle involvement
• scoping work through to testing, deployment and support
• happy working as a sole developer and also managing external development from a requirements and technical review point of view
• working collaboratively with a digital agency to ensure accessibility and security is compliant at all times
• knowledge of open data platforms or API integrations
• experience in using SQL
• an ability to mock-up screenshots, wireframes and prototypes for stakeholders to evaluate new frontend designs

Desirable Professional And Technical Experience

• Experience of some kind of project management system, ideally JIRA
• commercial experience building Drupal 10 websites
• experience with cross-browser and cross-platform testing, including some automated testing
• working in a containerised development environment, ideally Docker based. We use Docksal
• experience working with a CSS preprocessor such as SASS or LESS (In terms of front end, (WIG would also be useful)
• knowledge of web accessibility best-practice
• experience working in an Agile environment, especially knowledge of Kanban or Scrum
• managing a teams development with a git and gitflow approach (ideally using Bitbucket)
• an ability to mock-up screenshots for stakeholders to evaluate new front-end designs
• experience with any PHP debugger (we use xdebug)

Benefits

Alongside your salary, Forestry England contributes an average of 28.97% towards your pension. You will become a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension Scheme.

• 25 days holiday a year, raising by one day every years service, up to 30 days (pro-rated for part time employees) plus additional days off such as bank holidays.
• STaR is our employee benefits scheme offering discounts on everyday supermarket shopping, as well as other things such as hotel stays clothes, mobile phones, other electrical items, medical and car insurance, holidays, gym discounts, household bills, Headspace wellbeing app.
• free parking at Forestry England sites and free entry to our National Arboretums at Westonbirt

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