Lead Developer (Web and Digital) - IT Services - 34447 - Grade 8

IT Services

Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK 

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £41,526 to £49,553 with potential progression once in post to £55,750 

Grade 8 

Full Time

Permanent

Closing date – 13th August 2021

Working at the University of Birmingham

The University of Birmingham have started on an exciting journey to redevelop major areas of our website to improve the user experience and reflect the changing requirements of our users, the institution, and the sector. As a lead software developer, you will play a pivotal role in this journey.

You will be part of a high performing and agile product team centred around the University’s main website, developing it to better communicate our research impact, improve the student recruitment experience and continuously improve our standards and development practices along the way.

This is an exciting opportunity for a strong technical lead to develop their leadership skills at a world leading university. Our campus is a beautiful work environment, and we offer a wide range of staff benefits – including: 

•    Flexible working (including flexi-time and remote working)
•    40 days off a year (made up of 25 days annual holiday, seven closed days, and eight bank holidays)
•    Generous pension
•    Public transport travel discounts 

Main Duties

Some of the major areas of work you will be involved in include:

•    Moving from template-based to component-driven development.
•    Redeveloping major areas of our site as content types.
•    Implementing a new pattern library, rolling this out across major areas of the site iteratively.
•    Management of the release process.

Responsibilities

•    Working with a Product team and designers to create awesome new features using React.js.
•    Act as a mentor for junior developers.
•    Develop high-quality software design and architecture by producing clean and efficient code.
•    Building reusable components and front-end libraries for future use.
•    Ensuring all work meets wcag 2.1 aa accessibility standards.
•    Optimizing components for maximum performance across a vast array of web-capable devices and browsers.
•    Working with other teams and departments to deploy new features through release processes.
•    Work with teams to continuously improve how we deliver new features to our users.
•    Automate tasks through appropriate tools and scripting.
•    Review and debug code, perform validation and verification testing.
•    Code review pull requests from developers in the team.
•    Liaising with external design agencies.

Person Specification

Skills

•    Strong proficiency in JavaScript, including DOM manipulation and the JavaScript object model.
•    Problem solving skills, Interpersonal skills / collaborative nature.
•    Experience with headless CMS and Content Type architecture.
•    Experience with the Contensis CMS would be advantageous.
•    Thorough understanding of React.js and its core principles.
•    Experience with Agile, SCRUM & Continuous Delivery.
•    Familiarity with newer specifications of EcmaScript.
•    Familiarity with RESTful APIs.
•    Familiarity with C# and .net would be beneficial.
•    Familiarity with modern front-end build pipelines and tools.
•    Experience with common front-end development tools such as Babel, Webpack, NPM, etc.
•    Familiarity with Git.
•    Experience of continuous integration.

Informal enquiries can be made to Christopher Withers - [email protected]

Valuing excellence, sustaining investment 

We value diversity and inclusion at the University of Birmingham and welcome applications from all sections of the community and are open to discussions around all forms of flexible working.