Software Developer - Job Description

If you think this job could be for you then please apply here!

Introduction

The Legal Innovation Lab Wales is an exciting project working to accelerate advancements in the industry and invigorate growth in Legal Tech in Wales and beyond. The team consists of academic researchers, developers and support staff. The main role of the development team is to work alongside the researchers and other academics to deliver rapid requirement specification and software prototyping, which will serve as proof-of-concepts for further project proposals or development schemes.

We're looking to hire a talented and energetic Software Developer, who is able to leverage their experience and creativity as part of the team to deliver exciting, innovative projects.

More information on the project is available at https://legaltech.wales

You can read more about the dev team, the project we've been working on and how we work on our developer page

We welcome informal enquiries and conversation.

The Exciting Opportunities of this Role

The Software Developers will work under the direction of a Lead Software Developer to support innovation in LegalTech, cyber threats and access to justice. The team will have creative opportunities to shape project proposals and to develop prototypes. In the role, you will be encouraged to:

• Support the technical design, specification and development of applications for new prototypes, from the raw idea to a proof of concept.
• Work within the team to explore novel and productive approaches to software development.
• Produce proof of concepts that can be used to rapidly assess the value of potential technologies.
• Work on a variety of cutting edge projects with an emphasis on building software which makes a difference to people.
• Develop and explore your knowledge portfolio, with time each week to work on personal projects, reading or training.

How we work

We know that developer time is extremely valuable, and we've placed a heavy emphasis on optimising the way we work for developer happiness. We give each of our team agency and ownership of what they're working on. Most of our projects to date have been web apps, we tend to build these with Ruby on Rails and leverage Heroku and Cloudflare for CI/CD. We also use the Jamstack and static site generators where appropriate to make our lives easier.

You can read more about the way we work here: Our Approach

Benefits

• Extensive opportunities for on the job learning.
• Work in a friendly, cross-functional team, with people who aim to be the best and love to tackle novel problems.
• Flexible working.
• 35 hours a week and 31 days annual leave (plus bank holidays).
• New office facilities, with standing desks, ultrawide monitor setups and collaborative spaces.
• Fantastic University pension.
• Personal mentor.
• More benefits here.

Job Location

Swansea/Cardiff/Bristol or commutable distance to Singleton Campus in Swansea for a couple of days a week. Remote workers will be given equal consideration.

Interview

The interview will be in two parts:

A technical challenge, which will run from a Thursday evening, over a weekend until a Tuesday morning. Details of the challenge will be revealed the week before it starts. There will be a technical debrief after the challenge.

A formal interview, which will be about 45 minutes with a panel made up of three of our team.

Funding

This role is funded by the Welsh European Funding Office through the Legal Innovation Lab Wales operation until June 2023. We are working to ensure continuity following that date.

Main Duties

The aim of the role of the Software Developer is to:

1. Work with the team to propose solutions to challenges and suggestions offered by academic colleagues and collaborative research partners.
2. Seek, develop, and maintain relationships with colleagues and professionals within the fields of Computer Science, Law and Criminology.
3. Work independently when required or as part of the project team as needed.
4. Maintain and enhance your professional knowledge and pass on best practice to your colleagues. Share your knowledge with the team and wider through written and verbal means.
5. Understand the interests, issues, problems, and goals of the legal community in terms of how they work with legal/cyber threat information and processes as well as of the clients they serve.
6. Provide training, instruction, documentation and support to the end-user, informally in one-to-one situations and in formal training events.
7. Work with the team to ensure the quality of the codebase for all applications and projects within the remit of the team.
8. Support the technical design, specification and development of new projects, considering aspects such as functionality, usability, data, integration, infrastructure, security, reliability, resilience and performance.
9. Reuse, augment, and adapt open-source software, toolsets, and APIs rather than develop software entirely from scratch.
10. Any other duties as directed by the Line Management

Person Specification

We know that the "perfect candidate" doesn't really exist, we’re looking to find the right person to join our team. Please don't rule yourself out if you're missing a lot of the experience, the points below are designed to give you talking points in your application. We look for a diverse skill set, a hunger for learning and a brilliant attitude far more than ticking boxes on a list.

Use the points below to complete the application form to give us a good impression of who you are and why you would be able to excel in the role.

So, if you're excited about working at the leading edge of LegalTech development, an enthusiastic programmer with a diverse range of skills, you could be exactly what we’re looking for!

Qualifications

Please provide information about any degrees or relevant professional qualifications.

Experience, Knowledge and Skills

1. 2 or more years industry experience.
2. Demonstrable evidence of strong and diverse programming skills across a range of development platforms, including Full Stack development.
3. Passionate about building software to high standards and able to demonstrate examples of their quality code.
4. Ability to work well as part of a team in a technical project environment, and take ownership of projects when working alone.
5. Strong written and verbal communication skills.
6. Experience with front-end, UI or UX design and implementation.
7. Experience of unit testing, test-driven development, and user evaluation.
8. Experience with version control solutions such as Git, and version control best practices.
9. Exposure to MVC web apps.
10. Experience with database design, development, maintenance and optimisation.
11. Knowledge of software design patterns and principles.
12. Knowledge of various software engineering methodologies and best practices.

Other Criteria

1. Experience of working with Ruby on Rails.
2. The ability to quickly assess new technologies and patterns and to rapidly develop proof of concepts to demonstrate value.
3. Understanding of creation and management of CI/CD pipelines.
4. Experience of implementing solutions using Cloud based ‘Platform as a Service’ offerings (e.g. Azure App Services, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, GCP App Engine, Heroku).
5. Experience of containerisation technologies (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes).
6. Exposure to machine learning.
7. Experience of documenting solutions and architectures to recognised standards using a variety of techniques such as Agile Modelling, User Stories, Use Cases, UML or ArchiMate.
8. Familiarity with cyber security and cyber threats.

Key Dates

Application Closes: 19th December

Shortlisting: 21st December

Technical Challenge: 6th January (TBC)

Interview: 20th January (TBC)

If you've read this far, and you're still interested, then please apply here! or reach out with an informal enquiry to me.