Software Engineer - (Web Developer / Javascript) at the BBC World Service

The BBC, is the leading international broadcaster in Africa reaching a weekly audience of more than 100 million on Radio, TV, Digital (language sites and bbcafrica.com), Mobile and Social Media. We broadcast to Africa in English, Hausa, Somali, French, Kinyarwanda/Kirundi, Kiswahili & Arabic. We are committed to broadcasting to and from the continent in a style that meets the demands of our growing audience and as well as our language services, our presence in the region is also defined by our bureaux, special correspondents and bilingual reporters.

We are recruiting to fill the vacant position below:

Job Title: Software Engineer - (Web Developer / Javascript)

Job Reference: BBC/TP/672269/22157
Location: Lagos
Contract Type: Permanent - Full Time
Job Category: Journalism
Department: BBC Yoruba Language Service
Reports to: Editor, Yoruba Service
Package: Local Terms and Conditions Apply
Contract: Continuing

Job Purpose

• Responsible for implementing effective software and tools for given designs.

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities

• Develop effective software that meets given specifications
• Write appropriate tests using automated test driven techniques for ensure code quality
• Integrate the software with monitoring and support tools
• Support system integration in its operating environment
• Write and review technical documentation
• Help to troubleshoot and resolve issues throughout the product life cycle
• Participate in the team's agile planning and delivery process
• Effectively participate in the teams software development methodologies, such as pairing, code and documentation reviewing and continuous delivery
• Learn new technologies and keep abreast of existing technologies

Knowledge, Skills, Training and Experience
Essential:

• Demonstrable experience writing and maintaining robust production software
• Competence in one or more mainstream development languages and frameworks
• Competence with one or more mainstream development and deployment tool chains (IDE, SCCS, CI)
• Experience of database design and use in software applications
• Knowledge of the web architecture and key technologies (HTTP, DNS, distributed design)
• Competence test driven development
• Competence in developing for operational concerns (monitoring integration, performance testing, security considerations)
• Experience of project working and professional software development processes, including agile.

Desirable:

• Worked in an enterprise environment on several projects (including experience in testing, design and release)
• Experience of releasing their software to a production use case
• Participated in reviews and inspections of code (sat with a peer or someone more senior reviewing your code)
• Software Engineering or Computer Science Degree or equivalent.

Job Impact
Decision Making:

• Reports to Principal Software Engineer or Software Engineering Manager
• Tasks are allocated to the job holder by the team lead
• Undertakes tasks independently
• Independently writes tests to check quality of code
• Assesses feedback from reviews and incorporates as appropriate
• Troubleshoots independently or with the support of others where necessary
• Contributes to the teams iterative and collaborative design and implementation decisions

Scope
Finance:

• No financial responsibility
• Line Management: No line management responsibility
• Ad-hoc Teams: Participates in departmental hack days and external ad-hoc events (typically 5 to 20 members)
• This job description is a written statement of the essential characteristics of the job, with its principal accountabilities, incorporating a note of the skills, knowledge and experience required for a satisfactory level of performance. This is not intended to be a complete, detailed account of all aspects of the duties involved.

Appendix:

• There may be sub-sets of the generic job described above which require additional technical skills.
• This appendix to the generic job description can be developed to cover such situations.

Organisation
We are looking for web developers who are enthusiastic about online journalism to join a BBC World Service Data and Visual Journalism team in Lagos The World Service Data and Visual Journalism hubs will be made up of an editor, UX designer and a developer. As the developer in this team you will be responsible for:

• Building technical solutions to meet the requirements of the local design and editorial team.
• Assessing the technical feasibility of projects and giving realistic time estimations for the work required.
• Escalating any technical queries and all technical design where new or innovative approaches are being used for review to the wider technical team.
• Liaising with the wider Software development team in BBC News to ensure that all deployments to the live servers are peer reviewed and managed via GitHub with a London based Lead Developer across the process:
  • You will be based in Lagos but you will also be a member of a wider international development team and will take part in that community.
  • You will have the freedom to work on locally defined projects, but will be supported by structures and processes that ensure you will have excellent training and development opportunities and are always backed up by a team who will help you produce work to the highest standard.

Additional Job Specific Responsibilities and Accountabilities
Key Responsibilities:

• Work collaboratively in a multidisciplinary team and to proactively shepherd new features to live.
• To write world class HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
• To write server side code (mainly NodeJS, experience of Ruby/PHP desired)
• To work to current good software development practices.
• To write unit and integration tests using automated test frameworks.
• To work well in a team context according to the team’s shared practices.

Essential Attributes:

• Excellent front-end web development skills: o HTML. Semantic markup patterns for flexible reuse and accessibility. o CSS. Good understanding of modern techniques such as Responsive Web Design, recent CSS advances such as flexbox but also supporting legacy browsers.
• JAVASCRIPT. Excellent JavaScript programming skills, with knowledge of developing large, modular applications. Ability to write in ES6, and an appreciation of backwards-compatible / cross-browser JavaScript.

Building Robust Experiences:

• Using progressive enhancement and mobile first approaches to create experiences that work everywhere and for everyone.
• Accessibility - support all browsers with core content, ensure compliance with screen readers, in accordance with WAI standards, etc
• Great understanding of UX concerns. We want smart devs who can provide valuable feedback to designers to improve wireframes and designs.
• Ability to create production ready code with tests in one of: PHP, Ruby, Python or NodeJS (training will be provided if you don’t know PHP or NodeJS).
• Understanding of Service Oriented Architectures and consuming RESTful web services via HTTP.
• Experience of working in an agile or collaborative way.
• Familiarity in using GitHub workflows
• A level of familiarity with AWS or similar Cloud Infrastructure and associated tooling.

A Big Plus would be:

• An enthusiasm for News.
• Healthy interest in emerging platform level technologies - queues, microservices, caches etc.
• Understanding of CI, experience with using a CI system (Hudson, Jenkins).
• Knowledge of strategies to improve performance (HTTP caching, language best practices).

Application Closing Date
13th July, 2017.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online