Senior Front-End Engineer

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About Us

First Utility Group is a challenger energy and broadband provider, operating as a wholly owned subsidiary group of the Shell Petroleum Company Limited (Shell). Currently serving approximately 825,000 homes, the company launched in 2008 to provide an alternative to the incumbent energy providers with lower-priced energy, great customer service and innovative technology. Over the last ten years it has also helped customers waste less energy through the use of innovative technology that gives insight into individual usage and greater control.

We are proud to deliver award winning service and as we continue to challenge the industry, our talented people are integral to our journey. As we continue to grow our Team and expand our service offering, we now have office locations in Coventry, London, Krakow and Hamburg.

We’re looking for a Senior Front-End Engineer to join our Digital Platform Team to help us continue to make that difference.

How the role fits in

Based in Coventry, this is a key role within our digital growth team helping build mobile first responsive applications covering a wide range of areas, including customer sign-up, retention, website personalisation and launching of new offers/customer propositions.

You’ll be working in a fast paced environment that encourages lean thinking, experimentation and continuous delivery principles. We currently use Lean but this should not limit candidates who have experience of other Agile frameworks. Above all, we are looking for people who love shipping code frequently into production and can collaborate effectively within a cross-functional team of product owners, back-end API developers, test engineers, UX specialists, visual designers and wider product stakeholders.

You will be expected to deliver high-quality, mobile first, experiences using modern front-end technologies and have a solid understanding of building clean, modular, front-end applications using Javascript and CSS frameworks. Currently, we make heavy use of the React/Redux/Node.js stack but are always on the lookout for new technologies, and methods of working, to help us build better products .

The role day to day

- Working within a cross-functional team of product owners, back-end API developers, test engineers, UX specialists, visual designers and wider product stakeholders.

- Shipping features continuously into production using a lean product development flow.

- Pairing with fellow team members to write clean, modular, application code.

- Continously looking at ways to improve our ever expanding set of digital products, by suggesting techincal improvements, alongside deploying multivariate experiments to validate hypotheses/growth hacks.

- Deploying applications into production and conducting post-production monitoring.

- Taking time to conduct research days by investigating newer engineering techniques, tech frameworks and opportunities to capitalise on emerging technologies.

- Acting as a mentor throughout the wider team and helping develop your peers across all levels.

What you’ll need to help you make the best of the role

- Proven experience delivering great customer experiences through responsive web applications

- Expert Javascript skills (ES6/ES5 language features)

- React (or other Javascript frameworks for building front-end web applications)

- Familiarity with version control, such as Git

- CSS and SASS pre-processor

- UI/UX development experience. Able to rapidly prototype design concepts in-browser.

- Node.js and Express development

- A solid understanding of Agile methodologies with discipline around day to day task management

- Unit testing experience. Able to produce code that is testable, modular and easy to extend. We wholeheartedly believe that automated testing is integral to engineering and shipping clean, maintainable software.

- Excellent verbal and written communication skills and the ability to interact professionally with a diverse group of colleagues

The ‘nice to haves’

- Redux (or other application state framework)

- Next.js (or other server rendered web frameworks)

- Webpack, browserify (or any front end packaging frameworks)

- Grunt, Gulp, NPM

- Exposure to Docker

- An interest in progressive web apps (PWAs)

- Experience of microservices architecture and the twelve factor app method

- A good eye for design and/or UX would be considered an advantage

What you’ll get in return

Our people are our business, so our mindset is people first. Spending much of your time at work, we know it’s not just about a rewarding career, development opportunities and competitive salary - the work space, relaxation areas and coffee matter too!

We recently launched First Forward, our online guide to development opportunities with information on available apprenticeships, career pathways and our mentoring scheme; helping our colleagues reach their full potential.

First Perks is our benefits portal where you can access BUPA Private Healthcare, childcare vouchers, pension scheme, cycle to work scheme, our staff tariffs and exclusive savings and discounts from nearly 900 retailers - including holiday deals to help you make the best of your 25 days holiday (plus Bank Holidays). First Perks features discounts for many of the biggest brands - from Lastminute.com to Amazon, from John Lewis to Tesco; there is something for everyone.

We’re proud to support our charity partner the NSPCC and offer regular fundraising events from bake-offs to London Marathon entries. Our teams enjoy quarterly socials, some more adventurous than others! One tradition we’ve held on to as we’ve grown is "Fruity Friday" - heaps of free fresh fruit for all, every Friday.