Lead Engineer (Contract)

As the Lead Engineer you will be at the heart of building world-class products for Love2shop. Focus will be on technical execution and decision making within the product team. You will be responsible for designing, contributing and helping shape the technical direction of the fulfilment team, setting the software engineering direction for both internal and external delivery. You will be responsible for leading the team in the design, development, successful delivery and ongoing maintenance/support of integrations and applications. You will work in a fast-paced, cloud-first, product driven agile team helping to drive the delivery and technical competency of the team and the product forwards.

Key responsibilities

• You will work alongside the Product Owner in articulating and converting the Fulfilment products strategic transition plan into technical delivery outputs/outcomes.
• Designing, developing and maintaining scalable technical solutions that support the ongoing growth of the business through fulfilment product services.
• Contribute to architectural decisions across multiple initiatives, ensuring scalability and maintainability.
• Demonstrating experience of designing features with resilience, security and service management in mind.
• Assisting with translating technical solutions into language that non-technical staff will understand.
• Contribute to the process of evaluating new technologies & approaches, particularly where they relate to better software engineering.
• Ensuring that the business has systems that are performant & reliable and meet functional and non-functional requirements.
• Ensuring that the application lifecycle, quality assurance, database engineering and build and deployment tasks are in place and understood by the team.
• Helping to shape the team’s ways of working with the Project management team and Product Owner.
• Work with the product team to ensure that all software deliveries from 3rd parties contain high quality technical solutions and meet Love2shop’s expectation for software assets.
• Ensure the fulfilment teams documented engineering standards and practices comply with PCI–DSS and other relevant standards.

Qualifications and experience

• Experience of leading Design and Development work personally within a financial services organisation.
• A wider understanding of emerging technologies & their place in the world with the ability to do R&D to gain a better understanding of them.
• Strong knowledge of the full software development lifecycle as well as good problem solving and troubleshooting skills.
• Thorough understanding of delivery disciplines, processes and techniques.
• Experience of working in an Agile/Scrum environment.
• Good knowledge of other stacks & languages, the pros and cons of them and what situations they are best applicable to.
• Experience of creating a culture of accountability but where people are not afraid to share opportunities for improvements and to take accountability for mistakes.
• Experience designing/building and maintaining APIs (JSON REST, SOAP).
• Experience of leading an Engineering team within an internal IT Department.
• Experience of performing in a lead development role for 3+ years (ideally in technologies; object oriented languages (using an MVC framework), SQL databases). The main languages we use are PHP, JavaScript and NodeJS but any other languages such as C# are a bonus for us.
• Strong experience of TDD.

Personal skills

• A highly motivated, focused, flexible and tenacious individual with excellent analysis, organisation and planning skills.
• Detail conscious and systematic in approach to work.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, ability to listen effectively and interact at all levels within the organisation.
• A team player, but capable of working on own initiative.
• An engaging individual that swiftly generates confidence in key relationships.

Our benefits if you decide to join us:

• ~25 days’ holiday per year, plus bank holidays
• ~ Company sick pay from day 1
• ~ Company pension scheme
• ~ UK health care cover
• ~ Staff Everyday Benefits card offering discounts with multiple retailers (10%)
• ~ Corporate travel scheme with Merseyrail, Northern rail, Arriva & Transport for Wales
• ~ Fabulous kitchen space which offers free tea and coffee
• ~ Faith room open to all denominations along with dedicated kitchen space for Halal and Kosher food preparation
• ~ Family friendly leave
• ~ Community volunteering policy which allows you 2 days per year to support the community with charitable events

As a disability-confident committed company, we have a passion for championing equality. We welcome all colleagues into a work environment where success is attainable for everyone, regardless of disability, age, race, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation. We are committed to ensuring that everyone has equal access to growth and opportunities in our workplace.