About our client
At Collabco (recently acquired by Ready Education) we help Higher and Further Education institutions – Universities, Colleges, Business Schools etc – engage with their staff and students through our Azure-hosted multi-tenant SaaS platform “myday”.
myday provides a convenient, single point of entry to the multiple enterprise systems used in education, such as timetables, attendance tracking, tasks, email, news, calendar, and more.
As part of the Collabco Engineering team, you will collaborate with our existing front & back end devs, QA engineers, and Product Manager to deliver features and functionality from the myday product roadmap. You’ll also help ensure the stability, security, and performance of myday through behind-the-scenes platform enhancements, and building in quality as you code.
We follow a standard Scrum approach to software development, aiming to create a fast flow of incremental enhancements to myday every sprint, so if you’ve worked this way before our processes should be familiar – and if not, we’ll have you up to speed in no time.
As a Microsoft partner we have access to a wealth of support and learning materials, meaning you can grow your skills with us while solving real-world problems, and where possible we’re happy to fund certification in relevant disciplines.
We’re a global organisation with sites across North America and Europe, while our UK offices are in the Knowledge Quarter of Liverpool City Centre with great access to shops, restaurants, and green spaces; although we’re working fully remotely since the arrival of Covid, with some of the team choosing to stay that way, so being able to commute to Liverpool is not a requirement.
We do collaborate closely however, so being within an hour or two of GMT is a must, as we want everyone to be able to attend Scrum ceremonies and feel part of the team – especially while we’re working from home.
At Collabco we’re fiercely proud of our organisational culture, and while lots of companies have “values”, we live ours every day:
– We strive for ridiculously good standards
– We are positively challenging in our approach
– We make responsible choices
– We make trusting connections
Every 3 months we take time out to celebrate team members who have been nominated by their colleagues as examples of these values, as well as holding weekly all-hands sessions to help the team stay in touch, and providing access to services such as Well Room to make sure we’re supporting the team through a difficult time.
Formed in July 2021 from Collabco (UK), StuComm (NL) and Ready Education (NA) Ready Education Global are entering a period of aggressive expansion, with the opportunity to work on new products beyond myday over the coming months making this a great time to join a fast-growing organisation.
What kind of person are we looking for:
Reporting to the Engineering Manager, the role of .NET Developer will be part of our small-but-growing UK Engineering Team of 7 (8, including you!) helping us rapidly ship new features to our customers in a controlled and targeted manner.
You may have studied computer science at university, or be self-taught, but however you learned dev you’ll have a good understanding of the core principles of software development, being able to write code that’s clean, compact, performant, secure, and well documented.
myday was built for the cloud, and currently runs almost entirely on Azure, so experience in this area would be a big advantage for applicants. It’s not a deal-breaker, but any knowledge of App Services, Containerisation, Serverless Apps, Service Fabric, Cosmos DB, Redis, or other common Azure components would give you a good starting point for understanding the platform.
You’ll have demonstrable past experience of application development, and be able to talk us through real-world projects that have given you relevant experience; and while we don’t expect you know everything there is to know about application development, the role is unlikely to be suitable for candidates without hands-on experience.
The tools and techniques we use to build back-end functionality will be familiar to you, such as .NET Core 3+ and Visual Studio, and you will be comfortable with their functionality, ready to build your expertise as you settle into the role, and learn from our senior devs who will be on hand to support you through code review, pair programming, and other collaborative development activities.
You will contribute during all stages of the development lifecycle (it’s not “done” until it ships!) and support the overall delivery of the product roadmap, in order to achieve team and business objectives.
You’ll be responsible for ensuring your code is produced and maintained to meet both our business and users’ requirements and adheres to our coding and quality standards, and will review your peers code, providing constructive feedback.
We’ll ask you to contribute to the overall development process and technical design of myday, collaborating with the team during workshops and R&D activities to help us chart the best path forward for our platform as new features are added, and old ones removed.
And last but not least, you’ll value learning, and help keep the team sharp by agreeing personal development activities and goals that expand the team’s breadth of knowledge (recent examples include AZ 204 and 304 certification, and Certified Ethnical Hacking qualifications).
Main responsibilities
– Planning and implementing items of back-end development work
– Adhere to coding and quality standards
– Diagnosis of issues with existing products
– Working with QA to deliver features in an easily testable manner
– Contributing to development process improvements
– Contribute to technical design
– Providing accurate estimates for items of work
– Perform code reviews for other team members
– Prioritise and manage your workload
– Evaluate risk of technical decisions
– Evaluating suitable technology to adopt
– Produce technical documentation
Essential knowledge, skills, and experience
– Demonstrable, real-world experience working with .net and C# on web applications, ideally using .net core.
– Knowledge of Git, and branching strategies (we use GitFlow)
– Ability to diagnose and debug issues
– Understanding of cloud platforms
– A desire to learn
– Excellent problem-solving skills
Desirable knowledge, skills, and experience
– Developing applications in the cloud, particularly Azure with knowledge of Cloud Hosting technologies e.g. Kubernetes, Docker, App Services or Cloud Services
– Understanding of agile methodologies, particularly Scrum
– Knowledge of the education sector
– Knowledge of 1 or more data storage technologies e.g. CosmosDb, TableStorage, Azure SQL or Elastic Search etc.
Personal qualities
– Bring a positive, collaborative approach to problem solving
– Challenge the status-quo, and ask “why?”
– Attention to detail
– Ability to help others learn
– Share new ideas
– Understand when to ask for support
– Take pleasure in your work
– Enjoy the process of working as part of a team
About Personal Programmer
We are a nearshoring company that helps Macedonian developers to find their dream job working for international companies. A job where you can grow as a developer, and get the most out of your working life and career whilst enjoying every day you come to Personal Programmer’s office.
However, for the time being, due to the COVID-situation, we allow every developer to choose if they want to come to the office or work remotely. Your health is most important in these times and for us, it is only natural that you be the one that makes the decisions about the office choice. We are and have always been, a very transparent company where our developers have a lot to say. We listen. We believe in the positive effect of a long-term cooperation which, along with transparency, are crucial for a successful and satisfying working environment.
We do everything in our power to make your job as fulfilling as possible. We provide great equipment and working stations, advice about work-related subjects and about your salary, which you may discuss openly with your client.
At Personal Programmer you are in an ever-evolving team and we are looking forward to welcoming you to our family.