Software Engineer

At DC Thomson we are a business with a purpose – to make a positive impact on the communities we serve.

We are home to some of the world’s best loved media brands, organised around local news and radio, companionship, kids, advocacy, energy, puzzles and hobbies.

The Courier, The Press & Journal, The Sunday Post, Beano, Stylist, Puzzler, The People’s Friend, My Weekly, bunkered, Energy Voice, Findmypast and Brightsolid are just some of the brands you might know us for.

Deeply rooted in our communities, we are investing in data, technology and talent to unlock a new level of understanding about what really matters to our customers. This is how we are shaping the future of media.

We’re changing the way we work to create a flexible, collaborative, learning-led culture that draws on expertise from across the organisation to create award-winning content and cultural moments that make audiences want to be part of our communities.

Our HQ is in Dundee and we have bases around the UK employing over 1,200 extraordinarily creative colleagues working in a mix of office/home/hybrid. They’re passionate about being part of the story of so many well-loved brands and they’re crucial to our ambitions for the company.

We’re looking for the best people to join us at DC Thomson, to share their energy, ideas and skills and be part of our story.

Why join us now?

DC Thomson is on an exciting transformation journey to growth. Our brands matter to people and we are passionate about sustaining meaningful relationships with the communities these brands serve.

Focused on creating brilliant content and experiences that inspire our audiences and communities.

The Opportunity:

You will join the Architectural Modernisation Enablement Team (AMET) here within the Product and Technology function at DC Thomson. You will be working with web technologies on a daily basis and reporting to the teams Principal Engineer, working with direction from a Solutions Architect. You will be responsible for upholding AMETs pillars – Modernise, Share, Enable

A day in the life

A typical day will start with morning stand-up. This is a quickfire meeting where we cover what we’re doing and any blockers. Depending on the day this could be your only Scrum event, or there may be others. You may then choose to have some deep focus time on a Terraform based project that the squad is delivering to enhance our CircleCI pipelines, or you could code review some of your colleague’s pull requests on GitHub. After lunch you have a stakeholder demo, and a meeting with a third-party provider about a bug we have found in their SaaS product. You’ll use plain language and examples with the stakeholder, who may not have a technical background, then you will switch context for the bug call and provide a comprehensive technical drill down to give the provider the best chance of addressing the issue. To finish out the day you are refactoring some PHP application code to offset workload to a Lambda function instead, providing more performance for generalised usage in a containerised stack.

Of course, no two days will look the same and our Engineers have a high level of autonomy when it comes to planning their week.

Key responsibilities

• Collaborate within a team of cross functional professionals to deliver value in an Agile environment.
• Review problems and design solutions in a high velocity, iterative software development lifecycle.
• Take charge of personal development and pursue additional certification with guidance from experienced mentors.
• Mentor colleagues in appropriate software development and testing techniques and assist with their career progression.
• Assist in the creation and preservation of highly intuitive and long-lived software projects.
• Embrace and maintain our inclusive, dependable and compassionate Engineering Culture.

We’d love to hear from you if you have experience in the following:

• Demonstrable participation in creating and configuring applications by following best practices.
• Appropriately documenting and describing software solutions to a variety of audiences.
• Designing and explaining modular systems with clear contracts between components.
• problem solving and communicating with various functions and skill sets.

You’ll have technical proficiencies in:

• Working knowledge of at least one IAC language – preferably Terraform.
• Working knowledge of CI / CD flows (expressed within code).
• A good understanding of one (or more) of the following:
  • PHP
  • Typescript
  • JavaScript
• A good understanding of relational databases (MariaDB, MySQL)
• Familiarity with cloud services – preferably AWS.
• Knowledge of common web based application implementation patterns.
• Containerisation (Docker).
• Testing (Unit level).

 Benefits On Joining DC Thomson Engineering team are:

• You’ll get to work with a talented team of digital and industry experts who love to learn from each other.
• You’ll be part of a team that is critical to the success of DC Thomson’s digital transformation initiative.
• You’ll have the opportunity to shape your own learning and development path.
• Holiday entitlement, Health Plan, pension, access to personal development platforms such as LinkedIn Learning and A Cloud Guru, team social events, hybrid working and more.

To apply for this role, please follow our online application process and submit a CV and cover letter.

This is a full-time role, working 35 hours per week. This is a hybrid role offering a blend of home and office, working from our Dundee office. We offer a generous package including 34 days holiday, Health Cash Plan, excellent Pension, a competitive salary, and many more staff discounts and benefits.

We are an equal opportunity employer and encourage applications from everyone and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or any other protected characteristics.

If you have any issues with your application, please email recruitment@dcthomson.co.uk

Please note that we reserve the right to close the vacancy early once we have received suitable applications. Therefore, please ensure you submit your application as early as possible to avoid disappointment.