Front-End Developer

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Are you an experienced Developer, passionate about creating an excellent user experience across consumer-facing platforms?

In this newly created role, our Front-End Developer will provide technical expertise to grow our consumer-facing owned channels across our entire Penguin digital channel estate that includes Penguin Books, Penguin Crime, Penguin Food and more. The aim is clear, to create an excellent and cohesive user experience that delights and engages our growing audience.

This role has been designed to be at the heart of our user experience and the role holder will work collaboratively with other front-end engineers, testers, and third-party development agencies, to deliver features and services that meet our Brand strategy and ensure these technologies and systems remain stable, secure, and consistently meet our business objectives. You will champion agile working to deliver continuous service improvement and exceptional customer experience to end-users.

Our Brand division houses a number of central areas of specialist expertise which support and work closely with our nine publishing houses to connect our books and authors with readers. The department, made up of around 65 people, includes experts from digital marketing, brand, communications, design, consumer insights, events production and more.

The iconic Penguin brand – the only consumer-facing brand in publishing – sits at the heart of what we do. With the recent rapid growth in online sales, we have an exciting opportunity to leverage the power of our brand to help new and different readers discover our books and to champion the causes we care about. We’ve recently undergone an internal reorganisation in our department to help us take advantage of this unique opportunity, which includes building a leading digital marketing team and platform.  

Some of your responsibilities include:

• Developing high quality front-end code for new builds, and optimise, maintain and develop existing sites.

• Working with our Channel Leads, UX/UI Designers, Content Editors, Digital Tech Squad members, Technology department, internal & 3rd party development agencies and quality assurance teams to deliver across our digital channel estate.

• Building and maintaining strong internal client relationships providing regular demos to internal & external stakeholders.

• Building efficient, progressive and SEO friendly front-ends that work across a range of browsers and devices to ensure a seamless customer experience.

• Contributing to the general high standard of front-end applications across the business and taking ownership of improving and maintaining a best practice approach.

• Working in an agile development team, implementing industry best practice coding standards to ensure high quality, whilst delivering projects to time & budget.

• Generating program test data and conduct testing, code, and de-bug complex programs including testing for usability, whilst adhering to coding standards.

• Preparing and maintaining programs, technical and procedural documentation to conform to appropriate company standards.

• Control a suitable release plan and change control process for all code deployments, keeping relevant stakeholders informed and engaged.

To succeed in this role, you will:

• Have strong front-end knowledge, including responsive web development.

• Come equipped with solid JavaScript programming skills, for example JavaScript ES6 or TypeScript, HTML5, CSS3.

• Have a good awareness of the importance of accessibility, efficiency, and optimisation on the web, particularly regarding mobile devices.

• Be an experienced Agile practitioner with the ability to upskill team members and grow the use of Agile.

• Be comfortable managing competing priorities and able to influence senior stakeholders with the singular focus on the consumer experience.

• Have a strong understanding of version control, ideally Git.

• Have an understanding of headless CMS development.

• Have good knowledge of Wordpress CMS and sound knowledge of React, Next.js and Node.js

• Have sound working knowledge of GraphQL using Apollo Client.

• Have an understanding of key SEO principles and an awareness of cybersecurity best practices.

Our approach to hybrid working:

While our offices are places for you to connect, collaborate and celebrate with colleagues, having flexibility about where you work is just as important for doing your best work and for your wellbeing. So, we don’t have a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to how we work across Penguin Random House UK.

For this role, there are regular meetings and activities that you will need to attend in person mainly at our offices in Nine Elms near Vauxhall. Outside of these moments, you can choose to work remotely.

The exact balance of office to remote working can be discussed with your future manager during the recruitment process. What we can say now is that you won’t need to go into the office five days a week (unless of course you want to!)

Please apply with your CV and cover letter by Sunday 18th December. All interviews will be held virtually.

Please note: Due to the upcoming festive period some interviews are likely to be scheduled in the New Year.

What you can expect from us:

Salary: £40,000 - £50,000 dependent on how your skills and experience align to the role, plus bonus and benefits.

Our employees are the heart of our business. We have a range of benefits to reflect our commitment to our employees, some of which are:

•    27 days paid holiday entitlement in year one (plus bank holidays), increasing a day each year up to 30 days
•    Medical cover
•    Life assurance
•    Cycle to Work scheme
•    Discounted gym membership
•    Generous pension scheme
•    Summer working hours (role dependent) 
•    Volunteering policy and charity matching
•    Employee Assistance programme
•    Mentoring programme
•    Extended gender neutral parental leave
•    Access to books and eBooks across Penguin Random House UK
•    Each site has trained mental health first aiders 
•    We plant a tree for every new employee to our business

Our creativity is inspired by different perspectives, so we want our culture to be one of belonging, where everyone feels welcome and where differences are celebrated.

As a Disability Confident Committed organisation, we’re part of the offer an interview scheme. This is where disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role can opt in to get to the next recruitment stage. There may be some situations where volume of applicants means we can’t take all eligible candidates to interview.

We want to make sure disabled applicants can be their best at each step of the recruitment journey. If you need adjustments during the application process, we encourage you to get in touch with us at http://PRHCareersUK@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk. 

Remember, you only need to share what you are comfortable to for us to support your adjustment request. Find out more about our approach here: www.penguinrandomhousecareers.co.uk/applying-for-roles-with-a-disability

We partner with The Book Trade Charity, who provide financial assistance for people looking to get into the publishing industry; you can find more information and talk directly here: http://booktradeentrysupport.org/

Please note, we are not able to accept agency CVs for this role. Any CVs sent speculatively will not be eligible for a fee.