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

The Customer Products group works on our award-winning website, iOS and Android apps.

We are a multi-disciplinary, co-located team. We value transparency, accountability, shared responsibility, and teamwork.
We’re focused on our users and the FT’s mission to provide engaging, world-class journalism.

Most Engineers work across the entire stack, although many have expertise with particular technologies and domains, for example, client-side, performance, accessibility, building APIs, security, and integration. We deploy to production many times a day and have full ownership of releases, the tools we use, and site reliability.

Key Responsibilities

- Develop new features for FT.com and our mobile apps using modern web technologies.
- Collaborate with Product Owners, Delivery Managers, and UX Designers, contributing ideas to help achieve our company-wide goals.
- Maintain our high standards for web performance, security, and accessibility.
- Help improve the way we work and the tools we use.

Required skills and experience

- Core skill set and expertise in web development, with enthusiasm for contributing to all parts of the process.
- Action-oriented and pragmatic approach to problem-solving.
- Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail.
- Collaborative mindset and enjoyment of learning.
- Passion for performance and accessibility, as well as a deep understanding of design and UX principles.
- Ability to work without heavy reliance on frameworks, preferring tools that are good enough for the use case.

Beneficial experience with some of the following technologies:

- Node.js, Heroku, AWS Lambda, Kinesis, DynamoDB 

- Elasticsearch, Neo4j, Redis, GraphQL

- Handlebars, Sass, Webpack, Preact

- Fastly and VCL

- Github, CircleCI, Sentry

- Graphite, Grafana, Splunk

To find out more you can read about how we route traffic on FT.com and have a look at the code we make public on GitHub. You can also get an insight into how we work from our FT Product & Technology Medium publication.

Our Hiring Process

We understand that tech interviews are often stressful for no good reason, so we designed our interview process to be rigorous but friendly. We don’t do whiteboard coding or peer over your shoulder when you’re writing code.

We’re committed to equality and diversity in the tech industry, so we’ll be especially happy to see applications from under-represented backgrounds. We encourage this for example by considering part time roles and flexible working hours as well as tuning the hiring process to promoting diversity.

We have recently published our Engineering Progression framework and associated competencies for a Software Engineer.

What it’s like to work for us

Customer Products has over fourty engineers working in small cross-functional teams with opportunities to rotate to other teams.

We ensure engineers have the tools they need. People are free to choose the OS and device type that suits them, and we encourage exploration of new tools and techniques. We support informal knowledge sharing alongside more formal training opportunities.

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.