We're hiring! Front End Developer

About Kudos

An exciting opportunity to join a small but rapidly expanding team focused on providing a new and innovative online service for academic authors, universities and publishers. Kudos helps researchers, and their universities and funders, broaden the reach and impact of their published articles. This award-winning service has a global client based, including major publishers such as Wiley, Taylor & Francis and The Royal Society.

About this role

The Front End Developer reports to Kudos’ Product Director. You will be involved in all aspects of the front end code base, including building pages, HTML, CSS and developing our Angular application. You will also have the opportunity to get involved with all aspects of the design and technical systems including the Ruby backend, AWS infrastructure, designing database models and building APIs. We are a small, distributed agile team operating 2-week sprints with a strong focus on test-driven development, so the ideal candidate has great communication skills and takes ownership of code and development. We have a modern software stack comprising AngularJS, Sass, AWS EC2/S3/OpsWorks, Ruby Padrino (based on Sinatra) and are constantly looking for ways to improve the way we work. We use tools for cross-browser and device testing. The ideal candidate is always seeking to improve their knowledge and skills, and we’ll support that by sending you to conferences and providing access to relevant training. The Front End Developer will be based at our offices in Wheatley, Oxfordshire.

A typical day

Every day at Kudos is different and you are empowered to get involved in any aspect of the business and contribute ideas, whether relating to product development, partnerships, sales or marketing. The following gives you a flavour of how a day at Kudos might look:

• You take part in our daily stand-ups and regular sprint review and planning sessions
• You help define issues (tasks) by breaking down requirements
• You develop Angular, HTML and CSS modules with tests
• You pair with another member of the team on a tricky technical problem
• You work with the support team to analyse user issues and suggest solutions
• You participate in monthly all-company strategy events

Skills and experience we expect you to bring

• Angular or Modern web JavaScript framework (e.g. Ember, &JS, BackBoneJS)
• Experience with RESTful web services
• Interest in learning Ruby / back end / databases in relation to interaction with front end
• Understanding of MVC
• Experience of testing including mocking/stubbing
• Understanding of HTML5
• CSS pre-processors (Sass or Less)

Desirable attributes that will help you be successful

One or more of the following:

• Familiar with agile/scrum
• Understanding of Responsive, mobile-first web design
• Understanding of browser quirks and how to resolve them
• Understanding or front end build systems such as Gulp and Grunt
• Understating of user-experience theory
• Understanding of graphic design principles
• An interest in information architecture
• Creative and able to generate design ideas and mock-ups

Personal characteristics that we are looking for

• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Eagerness to get involved and make a difference
• Ability to work proactively
• Commitment to personal development and sharing that knowledge with the team
• A motivation to learn and grow and try new things
• Commitment to keeping up with latest technical news and developments

Salary and benefits

This is a full-time role with a salary of up to £45,000 pa and 25 days’ annual leave.

Application

To apply, please send your CV together with a covering letter outlining why you’re right for this role, to David Sommer, Product Director Kudos: David@GrowKudos.com

Closing date for applications is 26^th June 2015