Lead Full-Stack Engineer

ustwo is looking for a Lead Full-stack Engineer to support the delivery of our projects. This is a predominantly full-stack web development role, but extends to supporting mobile app teams, depending on the project.

You will work collaboratively to solve difficult problems and build great features in a cross-functional team of engineers, designers, product owners and delivery coaches. With your technical expertise you will manage project priorities, deadlines and deliverables. You will help design, develop, test, deploy software solutions.

You will work on projects that make a meaningful impact to our clients, their customers, and the world. We work very hard to win interesting and challenging projects. Many of our client relationships span multiple years and projects. We work across the project lifecycle, from highly strategic discovery work to large-scale build projects and everything in between.

Our teams work in a collaborative cross-discipline environment where everyone is responsible for quality, and hence encouraged to look beyond their immediate role. It’s also great fun working at ustwo!

How you’ll spend your time

• You will design, develop, test, deploy, and improve digital products with a focus on full-stack development - from front-end (HTML, CSS, JS/TS, front-end frameworks), to backend (typically JS/TS/Node), to infrastructure (cloud hosting, CI/CD, etc).
• You’ll work with delivery coaches and product/design leads to ensure we're building high-quality products as well as delivering the project on time, on budget.
• You’ll be expected to drive technical direction in projects and assure they meet scalability, robustness and security requirements.
• You will be responsible for the technical approach to problems, and getting the team aligned on a technical vision.
• You will be hands-on with projects, getting deep into code and be looked upon as a senior authority in software development tasks, projects, etc.
• You will also spend lots of time working with client teams to agree on technical approach and constraints, interacting with client stakeholders, and socialising tech designs to varied audiences
• As a tech lead, part of your role is to uplift the tech team through mentoring, working collaboratively, and possibly line management if it’s a good fit for all involved.
• You will be accountable for the technical delivery of the project by the team.
• You’ll get the exciting responsibility to bring in new ways of working and approaches to building solutions.

Location

This role will be based in the London studio in Shoreditch at 154-158 Shoreditch High Street E1 6HU. We currently have a hybrid policy in which you are required to be in the studio on our universal day on Tuesdays and one other day (flex on Wed or Thursday.) You are welcome to either work from the studio or from home for the rest of the week. We are keen for you to be involved in studio culture so the more you can get involved in opportunities for in-person social interaction; the better!

What we’re looking for

• Wide experience in building highly scalable and resilient web applications. Our people tend to either focus on either front-end or backend, but need proficiency across the full stack.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience working within agile environments such as Scrum / Kanban and, most importantly, embodying agile principles.
• Experience with deploying, hosting, securing, monitoring and scaling in the cloud.
• Significant experience of JS/TS/Node or at least one other server-side language (such as Java or C#).
• You can identify and apply the best design patterns for the problem at hand.
• Awareness of modern front-end frameworks/libraries (React, Vue, Next, Redux, etc), with deep experience in at least one.
• Experience in and be knowledgeable about different types of integrations - REST and GraphQL APIs, most importantly.
• Experience with databases (SQL and / or NoSQL).
• Experience with version control and an opinion on its proper use.
• Experience with creating and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and typical integrations.
• Understand the importance of automated testing, and have experience implementing automated tests.

Nice to have experience

What we’re looking for here is potential and interest to learn. So, don’t stress if your skills don’t stretch across all these areas.

• Experience working with containerized services and orchestration, although if you don’t know how to create and manage them, we’re cool with that!
• Experience with API design and implementation.
• Knowledge of CSS precompilers (PostCSS, Stylus, SASS) and CSS patterns.
• Knowledge of latest enhancements in core web technologies (like HTML, CSS, JS/TS), along with browser support - to enable good recommendations for our implementation choices.
• Experience with building Continuous Integration / Deployment pipelines.
• Experience with unit testing (Mocha, Jest, Jasmine, etc.).
• Experience with TDD and / or BDD and automating this using a framework (Mocha, Jest, Cucumber, Rspec, Capybara, Selenium, etc.).
• Interest in systems architecture, and demonstrated experience using diagrams to visualise complex ecosystems (or application designs) for varied audiences.

What you’re like

• You are a hands on, caring, resilient, patient, results-oriented, and humble person - you get things done.
• You foster community and are interested in bringing people together and making your team a great place to work.
• You’re human, and recognise humanity in others. This means both learning together and being able to speak to others, regardless of level/position, and empathise with their concerns
• You want to make great products that affect real people’s lives, at scale.
• You have a strong appetite to explore new technologies and share knowledge.
• You welcome feedback and look to improve project development and understanding.
• You are able to communicate well with non-technical team members or stakeholders.
• You don’t mind swerving out of your lane to take on the most valuable task when it’s needed, whether it’s in your job description or not.
• You are able to work to deadlines and in a fast-paced environment.
• You are a team player.

London salary bands for tech lead level is £75,000k - 100,000k depending on experience. Our full benefits package is available to all permanent employees, please see further details here.

Interested but think your experience doesn’t perfectly align with this job description? That’s ok. Research shows underrepresented groups in particular are less inclined to apply for jobs where they don’t meet 100% of the requirements listed. We’d still love to hear from you if you feel passionate about this role! We are committed to creating an inclusive environment for our colleagues, clients, community, and the users of our products. We don’t have all the answers but we’re on a journey, and we are learning together.