The Senior Engineer operates within a squad that is part of a wider tribe. The Senior Engineer is capable of acting as the technical lead for that squad, owning a technical design from requirements gathering through to live release. The Senior Engineer is able to confidently and efficiently assist with live issues and diagnose the most difficult problems within the squad. The Senior Engineer is integral to the definition, implementation and adherence to standards and best practices around software development and governance.
The Senior Engineer works very closely with the squad's Product Owner and Squad Lead to plan long running epics and assess status of squad tasks on a daily basis. The Senior Engineer will pay close attention to the squad's sprint deliverables and pre-empt any issues from escalating.
The Senior Engineer looks for opportunities to assist in wider tribe or organisational initiatives. These include, but are not limited to, assisting with recruitment, participating in continuous improvement of methods/tools and enabling knowledge transfer.
Accountabilities & Responsibilities
- Maintains a good understanding of the methods and tools used in the organisation and an awareness of those in use in the wider industry.
- Tailors processes in line with agreed standards and evaluation of methods and tools. Configures methods and tools for effective use. This may involve one or more of the following activities: tool development, process definition, hardware/software installation, customisation, testing, and documentation.
- Provides advice and guidance to support adoption of methods and tools, and the adherence to policies and standards.
- Reviews and improves usage and application of methods and tools.
- Provides advice and guidance to support the adoption of methods and tools and adherence to policies and standards. Using appropriate selection criteria, evaluates methods and tools, as directed, and tailors them in line with agreed policies and standards.
- Uses methods and tools in trials, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the trial subject to improve usage and application of methods and tools.
- Designs complex programs/scripts and integration software services in accordance with requirements.
- Codes, amends and refactors complex programs/scripts and integration software services in accordance with the design.
- Verifies and tests complex programs / scripts and integration software services; corrects errors and re-tests as appropriate.
- Documents work in accordance with agreed standards. Applies version control in accordance with agreed procedures.
- Applies agreed standards and tools, to achieve well-engineered outcomes. Identifies issues related to software development activities. Proposes practical solutions to resolve issues.
- Participates in reviews of own work and leads reviews of colleagues' work.
- Contributes to selection of the software development approach for projects, selecting appropriately from predictive (plan-driven) approaches or adaptive (iterative/agile) approaches. May provide software development or programming guidance and assistance to colleagues.
- Applies and maintains specific procedures and security controls as required by organisational policy and local risk assessments to maintain confidentiality, integrity and availability of business information systems and infrastructure components.
- Provides technical expertise to enable the configuration of software, other system components and equipment for the systems testing of platform specific versions of software products.
- Working alone on simple software or with colleagues on more complex software, produces outline specifications covering for example: objectives, scope, constraints (such as performance, resources etc.), hardware, network and software environments, main software functions and information flows, data load and implementation strategies, phasing of development, requirements not met, and alternatives considered.
- Produces logical software designs for complex software applications, components and modules, including: processes, objects, data flows, inputs, stored data and outputs. Creates and communicates multiple design views to balance the concerns of stakeholders and to satisfy and non-functional requirements.
- Translates logical designs into physical designs taking account of target environment, performance (and other non-functional) requirements, and existing systems and services. Produces detailed designs including for example: physical data flows, class diagrams, file layouts, common routines and utilities, program specifications or prototypes, and backup, recovery and restart procedures.
- Documents all work using required standards, methods and tools, including prototyping tools where appropriate.
- Reviews, verifies and improves own designs against specifications. Leads reviews of others' designs. Identifies, evaluates and recommends alternative design options and trade-offs.
- Uses appropriate modelling techniques following agreed software design standards, guidelines, patterns and methodology. Verifies software design by constructing and applying various methods.
- Models, simulates or prototypes the behaviour of proposed software to enable approval by stakeholders, and effective construction of the software.
Knowledge and Experience Required
Strategic and Leadership Experience
- Has good oral and written communication skills, an appreciation of overall practices and applications within IT, and the flexibility to interpret standards pragmatically.
- Takes a logical, analytical approach to problem solving and pays close attention to detail.
- Shows evidence of analytical ability and attention to detail. Appreciates the importance of commercial constraints. Has a good understanding of information systems concepts and practice, particularly the software used within own organisation and the software development lifecycle.
Behavioural Competencies
- Acquiring a proper understanding of a problem or situation by breaking it down systematically into its component parts and identifying the relationships between these parts. Selecting the appropriate method/tool to resolve the problem and reflecting critically on the result, so that what is learnt is identified and assimilated.
- Acquiring understanding and insights regarding the underlying issues in complex problems or situations through the development of abstract representations, the identification of patterns and the analysis of hypotheses.
- Understanding the metrics associated with a problem or situation, their significance and relationship, and being able to manipulate these as necessary to identify solutions.
- Identifying gaps in the available information required to understand a problem or situation and devising a means of resolving them.
- Taking account of new information or changed circumstances and/or business requirements and modifying response to a problem or situation accordingly.
- Retaining objectivity and proper understanding of a problem or situation when placed under conditions of stress.
- Determining a course of action by breaking it down into smaller steps and by planning and resourcing each of these, making allowance for potential problems and escalating if necessary.
- Making decisions at the appropriate time, taking into account the needs of the situation, priorities, constraints, known risks, and the availability of necessary information and resources.
- Maintaining focus on agreed objectives and deliverables.
- Understanding the needs of the internal or external customer and keeping these in mind when taking actions or making decisions.
- Being proactive, anticipating opportunities for systems, service or product improvement or development and taking appropriate action(s).
- Taking innovative approaches to problem solving and/or devising inventive and creative solutions.
- Meeting targets, acting and/or fulfilling agreements even when adverse circumstances prevail.
- Applying specific quality standards to all tasks undertaken to ensure that deliverables are accurate and complete.
- Understanding the hierarchy and culture of own, customer, supplier and partner organisations and being able to identify the decision makers and influencers.
- Understanding the needs, objectives and constraints of those in other disciplines and functions.
- Communicating effectively using the spoken word.
- Communicating effectively in writing, such as reports and via emails.
- Establishing relationships, contributing to an open culture and maintaining contacts with people from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines. Effective, approachable and sensitive communicator in different communities and cultures. Ability to adapt style and approach to meet the needs of different audiences.
- Working collaboratively with others to achieve a common goal.
- Directing others to undertake specified tasks within a defined timescale.
- Checking progress against targets, taking action to resolve exceptions/ issues and reporting and escalating where necessary.
- Helping others to understand their values, needs, goals and limitations and coaching them to develop their effectiveness towards the limits of their potential.
- The ability to think clearly and rationally; review and evaluation of processes and outputs; the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking; reasoned thinking involving critique.
Technical and Role Based Skills
- Technical or functional understanding of Online Sales applications especially quote engine along with other bespoke software deployed within the organisation to provide system configuration, audit, technical, and/or functional support.
- Implementation and delivery of relevant coding technologies to defined standards.
- Implementation and execution of thorough unit and acceptance testing.
- Understanding of emerging technologies and their suitability to business demands.
- Adherence to Agile Scrum methodology.
- Working directly with the Product Owner and business to develop solutions to support the product roadmap.
- Working alongside and collaborating with other Senior Software Engineers on the team.
- Support and mentoring for other members of the team.
- Work with shared services teams to ensure dependencies are raised and managed.
- Help to develop and promote the long-term technical strategy.
- Support the deployment of changes into the production environment and aid in the investigation of live issues or incidents.
- Ensuring the software delivered is performant, secure and scalable.
- Code reviewing/monitoring coding standards.
- Good working knowledge of Typescript and Angular.
- Good working knowledge of Java and microservices.
- Understanding of data management libraries such as RXJS/NGRX.
- Experience with CI/CD tools such as Azure DevOps, Jenkins
- Experience of working with Cloud technologies such as Azure and GCP.
- Understanding of version-control systems such as GIT.
- Working knowledge/understanding of BDD.
- Good working knowledge of SQL.
- Ability to design solutions and cater for non-functional requirements such as performance and security.
- Should be able to create technical and functional documentation.
- Experience working with JMeter/Postman.
- Experience working with REST and SOAP API s.
- Awareness of Guidewire products such as Policy Centre and Billing Centre, and the Customer Engage Digital suite.
- Familiar with other JavaScript frameworks/libraries such as React.
- Knowledge of testing frameworks like Jasmine, Karma, Jest, Vitest.
- Familiar with end-to-end testing frameworks like Playwright.
- Awareness of networking concepts. (load balancing, security, firewalls, reverse proxies etc).
Interview Process
There will be a two-stage process for this vacancy; one online test and one 60-minute interview via MS Teams.
Location
For Hybrid workers (within a 50-mile radius of our Cardiff HQ) there is an expectation to work from the office twice a month. For remote workers (outside of a 50-mile radius of our Cardiff HQ) there is an expectation to attend the office a handful of times a year when required (i.e big meetings, workshops etc).
Salary, Benefits and Work-Life Balance
We do not have a set salary for this position, as it will be dependent on the successful candidate’s experience. We are happy to see CVs from all candidates who meet the requirements and will be happy to discuss the remuneration package.
At Admiral, we are proud to be a diverse business where we put our people and customers first. We have great benefits to ensure employees have a great work-life balance; it's one of the reasons we’re consistently voted one of the Sunday Times Best Big Companies to Work For in the UK. We want you to have an element of freedom to define a working lifestyle that supports this, so accommodate flexible hours wherever possible.
All colleagues will receive 33 days holiday (including banks holidays) when they join us, and this will increase with length of service, up to a maximum of 38 days (including banks holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to five days of annual leave in addition to your allocation.
You can also view some of our other key benefits here.
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