Senior Software Engineer (Python)

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
• Membership – powering a seamless subscription/payments/access and the whole newspaper distribution customer journeys
• 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 details 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 stakeholders to fully shape solutions from inception to deployment and beyond
• Work 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 flow, data structures.
• Develop a close relationship with our customers and provide operational support

The ideal candidate profile is:

Essential

• Highly proficient in Python, NodeJS or/and Java
• Good command of SQL
• Minimum 5 years of proven project-based experience of building and maintaining data systems
• Has a track record of delivering well engineered solutions using current technologies and best practices such as SOLID, TDD, CI/CD
• Extensive experience in working with Databases and data sources of varying volumes, variety and velocity
• Good working experience with at least one cloud infrastructure, ideally AWS
• Good working experience in containerization technologies such as Docker or K8s
• Being able to establish and be promoter of good coding and engineering practices
• Being able to mentor other team members
• Being able to cover non-functional requirements such as performance, scalability, high availability, monitoring and security
• Good command of written and spoken English

Desirable

• Experience working within an environment where operational support and monitoring of code and high traffic/load systems is part of the culture
• Ability to accurately monitor and analyse system performance using tools like Grafana
• Experience with streaming applications such as Kafka (Spark, Flink)
• Experience in working with ETL frameworks (job orchestration tools) such as Airflow
• Experience in modern database technologies (AWS/cloud-based/in-memory etc.)
• Knowledge of optimisation techniques like indexing/performance tuning on both relational and columnar databases
• Ability to troubleshoot and cope with live incidents

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.