This role functions as part of Apple’s EMEIA Electronic Commerce Systems Unit based in Stockley Park, near Heathrow, and the primary responsibility is to ensure that Apple’s Online Store provides a better customer experience every day by delivering quality technical solutions, and by inspiring other members of the team to excel in their work.
This software engineering role will take technical ownership of a number of Java server-side services and applications, and will need to form strong working relationships with key technical and business stakeholders. They will help in formulating new feature requests, identifying other issues that need resolving, and ensuring that the solutions delivered by the team have appropriate technical designs and sufficient code quality. The Senior Software Engineer will also spend some of their time directly contributing by writing code.
The priorities in this role will be:
- 40% working with technical and business stakeholders, and monitoring the running store, in order to help drive appropriate requirements and technical designs.
- 40% delivering quality technical solutions, including writing Java code.
- 20% working with vendor partners to inspire excellence in the code they deliver.
Key Responsibilities
- Inspiring excellence and continuous improvement in themselves and other members of the team (both staff and contractors) to ensure the solutions they deliver fit into the Online Store’s architecture and have sufficiently high quality in their implementation.
- Working with Apple’s global engineering teams to drive standards, processes and tools to ensure the team remain efficient and deliver high quality solutions.
- Building relationships with key business and technical stakeholders in order to influence roadmaps and incoming feature requests.
- Monitoring the health of the existing Online Store platform and initiating enhancements or remedial work as appropriate.
- In conjunction with other Senior Software Engineers, be responsible for the overall design and architecture of the team’s solutions, fitting into existing global systems architectures where possible, but also pushing the global system in new directions where needed by influencing Apple’s global design and architecture team.
Key skills, experience and attributes required include:
- Of degree calibre
- Likely to have upwards of 5 years software development experience
- Proven web application or web service development experience
- Agile thinker and ability to work in fast paced, changing environment
- Collaborative style, approach and ability to influence in a matrix based organisation
- Strong technical leadership skills to lead large scale initiatives implemented by cross-functional teams that meet market needs with respect to functionality, performance, scalability, reliability, realistic implementation schedules, and adherence to development goals, principles and recognised industry standards
- In-depth knowledge in architecting and designing server-side web applications
- Must have a deep understanding of issues related to Security, Scalability and Business Continuity
- Commercial experience of high traffic and/or e-Commerce web sites would be a distinct advantage
- A clear understanding of different software development processes, both agile and traditional, and the ability to discuss advantages and disadvantages of each approach is required
- Must be committed to code quality. Must have experience with automated testing techniques (both static and dynamic)
- Prior experience of Maven and Continuous Integration systems would be a significant advantage
- Prior exposure to SAP would also be an advantage
- Experience in object-oriented programming (Java, J2EE, Struts or other MVC framework), Service Oriented Architecture, and Database design
- Experience working with Spring, Spring MVC and Spring Data would be a significant advantage
- Strong problem solving and debugging skills are required
