Senior Software Engineer, App - BackEnd in City of London

About the Role

At the Telegraph we build an amazing, engaging, fast, reliable and secure digital product (website and app) that showcases our journalism, encourages subscription and makes that process as seamless as possible. As a back-end engineer working on the App, your primary purpose will be to develop backend domain software applying modern best practices to deliver quality user experiences to support the Telegraph's product and subscription strategies.

Our Engineering principles are based on BUILD it, RUN it, OWN it. You will ensure your code is delivered to the highest standard in line with the product goals, on time and within budget, and you will be part of the rota to provide technical support for the systems in production. You will collaborate in the development of our performance and verification pipelines, and the cloud infrastructure required to run these, with the constant aim of full automation, sharing your knowledge and experience with other engineers. Above all, you’ll want to make The Telegraph better, which may sometimes involve challenging the status quo.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop robust, maintainable backend systems and microservices for a mobile application, ensuring scalability and performance, and adopting modern best practices in your designs and implementations.
• Work closely within a cross-functional team of Delivery Managers, Business Analysts and Engineers while collaborating with Product Managers and Designers to ship product features, translating business requirements into actionable engineering tasks.
• Write clean, efficient, and well-documented code in a collaborative environment, ensuring your code and that of the engineering team are to a high standard and in line with the product and technology standards and goals.
• Participate in and lead software architecture discussions, technical planning, and design reviews.
• Help define, roll out and evolve our testing strategy.
• Seek ways to improve the team’s processes, ensuring best practices are shared across the wider technology team.
• Provide 2nd line operational support as part of the on-call duty and proactively prevent, address and resolve production issues if they arise.
• Work with a DevOps mindset to help build, run and own your code in a production environment.
• Work with 3rd party technology partners and suppliers as required.
• Keep up with the latest technology innovations in media, cloud and software development.
• Be an active member of the Telegraph Engineering Team, contributing to the vibrant culture and promoting the Telegraph Engineering brand through public channels such as open-source communities, blogs and meetups.

Essential Skills

• Have an expert understanding of internet technologies, architectures and general application development.
• Be able to apply agile development principles and champion modern best software practices to continuously improve our software and the development processes.
• Have a strong understanding of the full software development life-cycle and be eager to influence the processes adopted by the team in delivering projects.
• Act as a strong advocate for quality in product development, continuous integration and automation and have a deep understanding of how to achieve these through the latest test strategies and using automation frameworks.
• Collaborate in all aspects of software development with a focus on quality, performance and verification pipelines with the constant aim of full automation.
• Contribute towards architectural designs and development techniques and standards.
• Have experience of the day-to-day on-call operations which includes ensuring you and your team have the training, tools and processes to quickly respond to any issues that may arise.
• Be able to communicate technical concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Be an advocate for the importance of DevOps.
• Have a flexible attitude and be willing to tackle new challenges with energy and urgency with a desire to develop and learn new skills.
• Be team-oriented, keen to share your knowledge and open to giving and receiving continuous feedback.

Technical Skills

• Deep proficiency in Java, with working knowledge of MongoDB and JavaScript.
• Familiar with frameworks such as SpringBoot and JUnit.
• A firm believer in test-driven development and continuous deployment.
• Familiarity with Docker, Jenkins and GitHub Actions for CI/CD and containerised development.
• A solid understanding of RESTful APIs and microservices architecture.
• Experience in software delivery within a high web traffic/high volume transactional online/digital/media environment.
• Best practice knowledge of security, performance and accessibility.
• Been part of a high-performing, autonomous, Agile development Team.

Additional Skills useful for role

• Working knowledge of cloud platforms and serverless architecture with GCP and/or AWS.
• Use of Server Side Includes/Edge Side Includes (SSI/ESI).
• Previous usage of workflow tools such as JIRA and/or Trello.
• Performance and Load Testing (Jmeter/Blazemeter).
• Maven Build tool.
• Swagger.
• Monitoring & Alerting (Datadog, New Relic, Elasticsearch, Cloudwatch).
• Caching (Akamai, Fastly, CloudFront).
• Exposure to Adobe Experience Manager and/or NextJS.
• Cypress.

The nature of our industry means life at the Telegraph Media Group is fast-paced, demanding, and interesting. We also want it to be rewarding for everyone who works here by creating a suite of benefits that contribute to lifestyle choices and leisure activities. From dynamic working opportunities, medical cover, and parental leave (six months fully paid maternity leave and enhanced paternity/partner leave), to life assurance and season ticket loans, you can choose from a range of flexible benefits, designed to support your lifestyle and help you achieve a healthy work-life balance.

Training and development

With support from your manager and colleagues, you’ll also have access to a variety of training and development opportunities through The Academy. Covering a range of personal and professional skills, our courses enable you to develop an enjoyable and rewarding career.

Our commitment to inclusion

At Telegraph Media Group, we foster a diverse and inclusive workplace and we are committed to building a team that reflects a wide variety of skills, perspectives and backgrounds. We believe in equality of opportunity and welcome candidates from all backgrounds, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer as part of the government’s Disability Confident Scheme. If you are disabled or have a long-term health condition and would like support in applying for any of our roles or if you require any reasonable adjustments in the recruitment process with us, please make us aware.

To find out more about Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Telegraph Media Group, and for more information on our purpose, beliefs, and people values, please visit our website.