Vacancy Details

Software Engineering Lead (Frontend)

Summary of Role

Zoopla is looking for a skilled and enthusiastic Software Engineering Lead to head up our frontend team and help in building some of the UK`s most popular brands. Our award winning websites attract over 50 million visits per month, and our engineering teams are at the forefront of it.

It`s an exciting time on the frontend as we`re redeveloping our whole site to a unified responsive design served by a Node.js / Express / Handlebars architecture. Our platform is built on Amazon Web Services, and we`re working towards a process of Continuous Delivery / Deployment.

This is a dual leadership and hands on engineering role where you will be both leading a team of frontend engineers across our various product teams and contributing as part of a cross-functional agile team.

Key Responsibilities:

• Line manage a team of frontend engineers to ensure engagement, retention and career development
• Identify training needs in individuals and across the team
• Hire and mentor new engineers, maintaining a culture of innovation, teamwork and self-improvement
• Work with product owners to help ensure engineers are engaged, delivering at pace and building high quality systems.
• Collaborate with your peers on technical strategy across product teams.
• Work collaboratively in a multidisciplinary team to deliver new features for the Zoopla websites.
• Write HTML, CSS and JavaScript according to best practices
• Work with UX and visual designers to take creative concepts from early stages through to live pages, building engaging websites and user interfaces
• Ensure high performance web experiences across mobile and desktop devices
• Apply best practices for accessibility and SEO
• Work well in a team context adapting to and influencing team practices

Skills required:

Essential:

• Track record of technical and / or team leadership
• Ability to recruit high performers
• Knowledgeable and comfortable with Agile development practices
• HTML: semantic markup for flexible reuse and accessibility
• CSS: good understanding of modern techniques and recent CSS advances
• JavaScript: ability to code ES5, ES6 without relying on frameworks and libraries
• Responsive Design: using progressive enhancement and mobile-first approaches to create experiences that work everywhere and for everyone
• Good knowledge of unit and functional testing
• Some familiarity with Node.js
• Knowledge of automation using npm
• Solid understanding of UX concerns with the ability to provide feedback to designers to improve prototypes and designs
• Experience with medium to large web development projects, working in a team that includes front and backend developers, product owners, QA testers, and UX/visual design specialists
• Good understanding of Git

Desired:

• Experience with Node.js, Express and templating engines such as Handlebars
• CSS processing e.g. Sass, PostCSS, Less etc.
• Working with public and private RESTful APIs
• No stranger to the command line
• Use of visual design software such a Photoshop, Sketch, Fireworks or similar

Working with us:

We`re based in a vibrant area that`s full of history. Built on the site of the old Courage brewery, our "Cooperage" offices are located right next to Tower Bridge on the south side of the Thames.

Our workplace has a free gym, games room, in-house barista and free breakfasts / snacks. These are just part of an extensive wider benefits package that includes a generous contributory pension, bonus schemes, life assurance and much more.