Web Development Software Engineer

About us

The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading news organisations, globally recognised for its authority, integrity and accuracy, with a mission to deliver quality information and services worldwide.

At the FT, curiosity thrives and ambitious thinking is rewarded. Together, we help audiences stay better informed and deepen their understanding of the world around them.

Our Product & Tech teams drive us forward in an ever-evolving digital landscape, delivering cutting-edge products to over one million digital subscribers daily. Our growth relies on a diverse, dedicated and dynamic group of product, tech, delivery and data specialists.

With a supportive culture, entrepreneurial spirit and opportunities at every turn, there are no limits to where your FT career can take you.

Build a newsworthy career at the FT.

Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion 

We believe in the power of unique perspectives and want all voices in our organisation to be heard, respected and valued. A supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves and operate to their full potential. We are committed to removing barriers for everyone, with a focus on addressing those faced by underrepresented groups.

The role 

This is an exciting opportunity for an engineer to join the FT Specialist group as part of the Product & Technology organisation within FT.  A key part of the business, providing significant revenue and contribution to the FT, is a division titled “FT Locations".

FT Locations (part of FT specialist) provides the world's most comprehensive offering of products, market intelligence and services related to foreign direct investment, helping companies, investment promotion agencies, economic development organisations and other governmental bodies attract inward investment and helping companies to make informed global investment decisions.

Your role within the FT Locations team will be as a web based / software developer and full stack systems engineer working on a diverse suite of web-based commercial and internal database products.

The work will entail a mix of support of existing solutions and building new solutions in close collaboration with data, research, sales and marketing teams within the division. 

The role will include engineering on front-end, back-end and systems design across several different technology groups and products (see technology stack below). 

The Technology Stack / Dev tools
We often use these, it's not an exhaustive list but gives you a taste of what our technology stack and tools look like:

• CFML (Adobe Coldfusion / Lucee)
• Java / .NET / PHP / Ruby
• SQL (MS SQL Server, MySQL)
• JavaScript
• React / Next JS
• GraphQL / Rest API
• Jenkins / CircleCI
• Fastly / Splunk
• AWS / Heroku
• Linux / Windows
• Bitbucket / JIRA / G-Suite
  
  

Key responsibilities

• Working as part of 4-6 person development team on a suite of cloud based database applications
• Managing your own workload in collaboration with the engineering team reporting into the senior architect.
• Building robust, fault tolerant solutions that follow the guidelines and coding best practices.
• Communicating effectively on expected timelines, risks, blockages and optimisation/technical debt opportunities. 
• Developing and leveraging reusable components for use across multiple platforms and systems.
• Bringing forth new ideas, technologies, software methodologies and development practices for discussion and consideration by the engineering team. We love self starters looking to constantly innovate.
• Modernisation of legacy applications into Javascript, client frameworks.
• Eradication of technical debt, performance bottlenecks and security vulnerabilities.
• Develop an in-depth understanding of FT Locations’ underlying data, data flow and world leading database products.
• Develop and maintain an understanding of the business domains within FT Locations and FT Specialist. Use that understanding to shape the development of the platforms you support and build.
• Assist stakeholders, business leads in the conception, design and delivery of new features and solutions for the customer applications
• Assist research teams in the technical support and development of several internal staff platforms and data management applications.
• Work within the department's strategy and guardrails, and contribute to their ongoing refinement.
  
  

Required skills and experience

• Experience in a software development role. (ideally web)
• Extensive experience using the wide range of technologies and patterns required to build modern web products and services along with the tools that enable their creation.
• Deep knowledge of at least one server side web programming language (PHP, .Net, CFML, RUBY) + capable experience with web development stacks incl. HTML/CSS/Javascript
• Some exposure to or ideally experience with a Javascript framework such as React and NodeJS
• Some exposure to or ideally experience with GraphQL / REST API.
• Relational Databases, Document stores and search technologies like SQL, DynamoDB / SOLR
• Good prioritisation and working effectively within delivery deadlines to coincide with departmental deadlines.
• Application performance tuning and optimisation.
• Designing for fault tolerance
• Able to balance the customer and business product needs with those needed to build high quality products.
• Understand the importance of diversity and equality in a well functioning team.
• Be able to manage your own work streams, timelines, priorities and communications.
• Excellent communications skills

 

What’s in it for you? Our benefits

Our benefits vary by location but we are committed to providing best-in-class perks across all our offices. These include generous annual leave, medical cover, inclusive parental leave packages, subsidised gym memberships and opportunities to give back to the community. Full details of our benefits are available here.

We’ve embraced a 50% hybrid working model (averaging two to three days onsite) that fosters trust and remote adaptability while encouraging in-person camaraderie and peer learning. Additionally, we are open to accommodating specific flexible working pattern requests for all roles where feasible.

Accessibility

We are a disability confident employer and Valuable 500 signatory.

Please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments/personalisation 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, email talent@ft.com and a member of our team will be happy to help.

Further information

At the FT, we embrace innovation and the use of technology and appreciate that individuals may leverage AI tools as part of their job application process. Whilst we are happy for you to use AI to assist with your application, it is essential that all information provided is authentic and accurately represents your skills, experience, and qualifications.

Candidates should be aware that the use of AI throughout the application process may be monitored to ensure a fair and transparent hiring process for all.