Lead Java Engineer

This job has now expired please search on the home page to find live IT Jobs.

Here at First Utility we want to make a difference. We are changing the face of the energy industry by campaigning for more transparency, better communication and a speedier switching process. Through pioneering technology and sharing our knowledge, we put our customers firmly in control of their energy, so they can spend less on what they need and more on what they want.

We are proud to deliver award winning service and as we continue to challenge the industry, our talented people are integral to our journey; our people make that difference. 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 Lead Software Engineer to join our Core Platform Team to help us continue to make that difference.

How the role fits in

A hands on technical role within our Core Platform, you will lead a team who are focused on building advanced software solutions for our on-line energy and telco business.

This is a key development role, building advanced software solutions and supporting and enhancing existing products for our growing energy and telco business. Projects cut across a wide range of areas, including:

Online registrations and customer self-serve

Many of the systems that support our customer facing teams

New business opportunities

Expanding the capability of our smart meter platform

You’ll work within and lead a multi-skilled agile team that has a focus on reducing cost to serve customers and is able to react to the changing demands of a dynamic fast growing business.

The role day to day

- Run the engineering disciplines of small to medium sized projects and be seen as the technical owner and go-to person for one or more of First Utilities functional areas.

- Work closely with the business to understand issues and to come up with both tactical and strategic solutions depending upon the critical nature of the issues found

- Be responsible for leading a team to deliver software changes in an iterative manner, so you will need to work within a multidisciplinary team that includes business stakeholders, architects and product managers to deliver these requirements on time and to budget

- Be accountable for leading various agile activities such as estimating, planning and reviewing activities effectively to maintain and/or improve quality of the software developed

- Provide coaching and mentoring for less experienced members of the Agile Team

- Deliver high quality, efficient, defect free code following the basic agile principles.

- Take an active role in the various agile activities like planning and estimating sessions

- Encourage and implement testing best practices

- Analyse requirements, specifications and decompose systems to generate a testing model and automate them efficiently across functional and non-functional requirements

- Responsible for reporting on progress, risks and issues

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

Essential skills

- Extensive experience of the Java programming language including Java 8 within an Agile environment, and be passionate about all things Java

- Experience of the Spring framework and dependency injection

- An understanding of RESTful services

- Experience of working with Java Persistence Frameworks such as Hibernate

- Experience of working with Java Messaging Frameworks

- The ability to write clear, concise code that adheres to commercial standards

- A good appreciation of coding standards, design best practices and keen desire to apply them

- Experience working with relational databases, e.g. PostgreSQL/Oracle

Essential Experience

- Experience with various testing methodologies and best practices, e.g. the test pyramid

- Experience working within agile frameworks, e.g. Scrum

JUnit with an understanding of BDD and at least some experience with BDD testing tools, e.g. Cucumber, JBehave

- A working knowledge of continuous integration practices

- Experience with version control systems, e.g. Git

- A working knowledge of Linux operating systems and some exposure to shell scripting

The 'nice to haves'

Desirable Skills

- A range of programming languages; JavaScript (Node.js), Groovy, Scala, Ruby

- Queuing technologies; JMS, HornetQ, ActiveMQ, Kafka

- NoSQL databases; Cassandra

- Configuration management; Puppet

- Docker/containers

Desirable Experience

- Continuous delivery

- Microservices

- The energy industry

What you'll get in return

Our people are our business, so our mind-set 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!

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.

So if you like the fast pace of an evolving business, feel it’s important to reach your full potential and enjoy your time at work, then a career with us could be your next move.