Description
Senior Platform Developer
Job description
We put our users first. We build products that organize scientific information and make it universally accessible and reusable to our users. We are incredibly passionate about what we do.
We're looking for an experienced Back End software engineer to join the Data team. We expect you to think on your feet and be able to come up with practical, simple solutions to complex problems. As well as having deep knowledge in areas related to Back End development, you should also be knowledgeable in all things related to creating a quality user centered product. As a Back End developer, you will be part of shaping science's next steps.
About the role
You will contribute to the company API, a public API which is used both internally by the company and externally by the general public to build client applications on top of.
Our stack is written in Java/MySQL and uses Hadoop and various AWS products, so you'll already have or quickly gain a strong aptitude in these technologies.
We're looking for a passionate developer who has a history of self-direction on complex projects which are exploratory in nature and not fixed, responding to user feedback and working in a fast paced environment.
Our ideal team is full of T-Shaped people, who are experts at areas of deep knowledge, as well as a having a broad understanding of other disciplines (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills).
About us
We are committed to building cohesive teams where communication, support and innovation thrives. Instead of taking a top-down approach to new ideas, all members of the team are empowered to contribute. Great ideas can come from anywhere.
We adopt an Agile process, with daily stand-ups, sprints, demos, retrospectives and other Agile practices.
All features are written as a user story, and we strongly believe in a user centred approach to design, as this is a user facing product. Many of our features come as a direct result of user testing, and therefore may not have been predicted in advance.
We're nearing the launch of the first part of our Data product, but there are many areas we are yet to explore. You will initially be working on the core Data product, but may move into other related areas soon after.
Required experience
You have great team skills, including the confidence to put your idea across, even if the idea is initially unpopular, and the humility to admit when you are wrong.
Like everyone else on our team, you are versatile with a broad perspective, eager to learn new things and use the best tools for the job. You're not afraid to venture into uncharted territory and come away with mastery of it.
Quality is important to you. You practice unit testing, code reviews and constant communication to ensure the best outcome.
You have deep experience of writing Back End systems in Java and of working on an open API. Experience of other JVM languages is a bonus.
You have experience building relational data models and exposing them to client applications via a restful API whilst abstracting away the underlying models.
You have experience with various caching mechanisms that insulate clients from the persistence layer and accommodate low latency reads.
You have experience with highly scalable security models and frameworks, such as OAuth and SSO.
You have a history of building and taking products to market in fast-paced environments.
You have a bias for simplicity, elegance, scalability, robustness and maintainability in the code you write.
You build architectures which allow natural and fast iterations to support our agile development process.
You are committed to the bigger picture of large software ecosystems; you are constantly thinking about the future when building new applications and features.