Company & Department Context

The Financial Times (FT) is one of the world’s leading business news and information organizations. We are recognized globally for our authority, integrity and accuracy. We provide a broad range of essential services, including news, comment, data and analysis, to the growing audience of internationally minded business people.

We have offices in more than 35 cities, including London, New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, Manila, Sofia, San Francisco and Tokyo. Join us and find an inclusive and fast-paced environment with unique opportunities to support every step of your career.

Learn more about the FT, including announcements and career opportunities, at aboutus.ft.com and FT Specialist

Position Summary

This is an exciting opportunity for an engineer to join the FT Specialist group as part of the Product & Technology organisation within FT.

A key part of the business, providing significant revenue and contribution to the FT, is Specialist Titles. This is an exciting time for Specialist Titles as we are creating a large new cross functional product & technology team in Sofia to support the needs of this part of the business. FT Specialist is entering a new era. We have a golden opportunity to renew our technology estate, to use best practices and to build a modern sustainable technology stack that will underpin the success of the business for years to come.

FT Specialist brings together a portfolio of niche digital publications, including ones with more than 160 years of tradition.

• Investors’ Chronicle
• The Banker
• FT Adviser

You will have the autonomy to select the tools and technologies you need to build and operate services responsible for FT Specialist brand critical capabilities. Someone who is comfortable with the ever changing technical landscape and is keen to contribute to the company’s processes and broader know-how would thrive in this role.

Working in the FT Specialist team you will be responsible for delivering innovative technical solutions as you build and operate world class platforms to grow the Financial Times strategic business models.

We have recently published our Engineering Progression framework and associated competencies for a Software Engineer relevant to this position

The Tech Stack

We often use these, it's not an exhaustive list but gives you a taste of what our technology stack and tools look like:

• JavaScript
• React
• GraphQL
• Node.js
• CircleCI
• Cloudflare
• AWS
• Splunk

This role will be right for you if you are happy to:

• Help with technical decision-making to support the technology strategy
• Aid and support personal development of more junior team-members
• Develop and maintain an understanding of the business domains within FT Specialist. Use that understanding to shape the development of the platforms you build.
• Work within the department's strategy and guardrails, and contribute to their ongoing refinement.
• Have a practical approach to working with a large portfolio of products that leverage a diverse range of technologies.
• Communicate widely within the organisation to ensure best practice in other areas is understood and adopted where it makes sense to do so.

Essential skills and experience:

• Extensive experience using the wide range of technologies and patterns required to build modern web products and services along with the tools that enable their creation.
• Deep knowledge of at least one programming language
• JavaScript, React, GraphQL, Node.js
• Cloud infrastructure: (AWS, GCP or similar)
• Marketing Technology platforms e.g. Bloomreach
• Editorial Technology e.g. CMS and Event Management Platforms
• Databases, document stores, search technologies and data warehouses like MySQL, MongoDB, ElasticSearch, BigQuery or Redshift
• Message queues like Kinesis, SQS etc.
• Application performance tuning and optimisation.
• Understanding of CI and CD delivery pipelines like CircleCI or Jenkins
• Designing for fault tolerance
• Writing automated unit and end-to-end tests – with best practice in mind – for feature development
• Able to balance the customer and business product needs with those needed to build high quality products.
• Understand the importance of diversity and equality in a well functioning team
• Be able to communicate clearly and concisely

Desirable skills and experience

• An understanding of CDNs and the role they play is web application architecture. e.g.Cloudflare, Cloudfront, Akamai etc.

• Instrumenting for observability and operability
• Understand how to build and maintain APIs
• How to design software to support easy scaling using a methodology like the 12 factor app

What’s in it for you? Our benefits

• Annual bonus scheme
• 25 days paid leave
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Program
• Life Insurance
• Enhanced Parental Leave policy
• Food Allowance
• Multisport Card
• Both in house and external training programs
• Your own training dedicated budget (for conferences, courses etc.)

We currently operate a hybrid model which requires staff to work onsite 50% of the time, subject to role requirements & regular review. While flexible working requests will be considered, not all patterns are suitable for all roles. We believe this balanced approach supports flexibility and protects our culture, making collaboration and communication easier, building stronger relationships and team cohesion, and supporting peer learning. We reserve discretion on reasonable notice to change this approach either generally or for specific individuals or teams.

Accessibility

We are a disability confident employer and Valuable 500 signatory.

Please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments/personalisation as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements or have any questions, email [email protected] and a member of our team will be happy to help.

Further information

At the FT, we embrace innovation and the use of technology and appreciate that individuals may leverage AI tools as part of their job application process. Whilst we are happy for you to use AI to assist with your application, it is essential that all information provided is authentic and accurately represents your skills, experience, and qualifications.

Candidates should be aware that the use of AI throughout the application process may be monitored to ensure a fair and transparent hiring process for all.

Please beware of fraudulent job postings and offers claiming to be from the Financial Times. All legitimate opportunities will direct you to apply through the official Financial Times careers site, and the FT will never ask for financial information, payments, or referrals to third parties during the hiring process. If you have any concerns about the legitimacy of a job posting or suspect any scam activity, please contact [email protected].

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