Software Engineer – Data Platform

Company Context

Here at the The Financial Times , gold-standard journalism is just the beginning. 500-people strong, our Product and Tech team keeps us ahead of the ever-changing digital landscape by delivering cutting-edge products to over one million digital subscribers every day. Our plans for growth rely on a diverse, dedicated and dynamic group of product, tech, delivery and data specialists – everyone’s welcome in this friendly, forward-thinking team. And with entrepreneurial spirit, intelligence and opportunity at every turn, there’s no limits to where your FT career will take you.

Position Summary

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

FT Core brings together key digital assets like:

• Content and Metadata – enabling content publishing, discoverability and targeting
• Print and Digital Subscriptions – powering a seamless subscription/payments and the whole newspaper distribution customer journeys
• Access and Identity – enabling several authorization and authentication mechanisms as well as a powerful access decision engine
• Search and Recommendation – offering end user search, recommendation and insights APIs bridging the gap between content and user data.
• Data Platform – enabling storing, processing and getting insights from readership data

You will have the autonomy to select the tools and technologies you need to build and operate services responsible for FT 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 Data Platform 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. To help you understand in more detail the Financial Times’ Data Platform team’s goals and projects take a look at this article.

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:

• Python (optionally NodeJS or Java)
• SQL, DB engines such as Redshift, SingleStore, BigQuery
• Workflow orchestration tools like Airflow (Luigi or Oozie)
• Cloud: ECS/EKS, Kinesis/MSK (Kafka), Redshift
• Streaming technologies (Kafka, Spark or Flink)
• GitHub, CircleCI
• Graphite, Grafana, Splunk

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

• Work directly with product owners and more senior engineers to fully shape solutions from inception to deployment and beyond
• Work within a team of engineers in an agile delivery team
• Development of high quality data solutions within Financial Times’ Data Platform
• Design and implement low maintenance, well monitored, secure and scalable solutions to customer problems
• Design, build and operate solutions, from cradle to grave, which meet both functional and non-functional KPIs
• Understand and play an active part in designing the architecture, tooling and release cycle processes used by the engineering teams across Product & Technology
• Contribute to company-wide processes, frameworks and guidelines
• Develop an in-depth understanding of FT’s underlying data and data flows, data structures
• Develop a close relationship with our customers and provide operational support

The ideal candidate profile is:

Essential

• Development experience in Python including development of microservices
• Experience in working with Databases
• Experience in containerization technologies such as Docker or Kubernetes
• Knowledge of design patterns – TDD, OOP, SOLID
• Experience working with data sources of varying volumes, variety and velocity
• Willingness and curiosity to learn and use new technologies and programming languages not familiar with

Desirable

• Experience working with AWS Cloud services in the Big Data domain
• Experience with streaming applications such as Kafka streams, Spark or Flink
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines such as Circle CI
• Experience in working with ETL frameworks (job orchestration tools) such as Airflow, Luigi or Oozie
• Being able to maintain good coding and engineering practices
• Experience working as part of an Agile delivery team, using methodologies like Scrum and Kanban
• Experience with system monitoring and support

What’s in it for you? Our Benefits

• Annual bonus scheme
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Program
• 25 days annual paid leave
• Private Health Insurance
• Life Insurance
• Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Leave policy
• Food Vouchers
• Multisport Card
• Work-life balance and work from home practice
• Both in house and external training programs
• Your own training dedicated budget (for conferences, courses etc.)

Further Information

At the FT, we are committed to providing an inclusive working environment for all. We are an equal opportunities employer that seeks to recruit and appoint the best talent regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We also promote flexible working and will consider specific requests around flexibility for all roles where it can be accommodated. We aim to treat all employees in a fair and consistent manner, promote good working relationships to encourage high standards of conduct and performance within a work environment free from harassment, bullying and discrimination. Please let us know if you require any adjustments 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, please contact a member of our HR team who will be happy to help.