Coding, Development and Publication of Websites In-Line with Business Demand

Job Purpose

Coding, development and publication of websites in-line with Business demand.

Main Duties

• Work with stakeholders to scope out briefs and plan application development lifecycle.
• Work closely with other team members to solve technical challenges.
• Working with staff of varying technical abilities to help develop and advise on technical challenges. The ability to communicate with non-technical staff in a jargon free manner is important.
• Working with the Web Development Manager to continually improve website infrastructure/workflow/ coding conventions and code integrity.
  

Experience

At least 3 years commercial experience in a backend web development role. Extensive freelance experience will also be considered but code examples will be required.

Essential Skills

• PHP/OOP
• Candidate should possess at least three years experience with PHP/OOP.
• Specifically knowledge of basic OOP design patterns and a good appreciation of OOP principles is essential.

• MySQL/SQL
• Candidate should possess a good working knowledge of SQL with recent experience using MySQL for web application development. Further knowledge of PDO is essential.

• PHP Frameworks
• The candidate should have recent experience with at least one PHP MVC Framework such as Zend Framework 2 or Symphony. Other such frameworks are held in equal regard but the successful candidate will be expected to work with some ZF2 applications and they should be prepared to learn this.

• Git repositories
• Experience with Git repositories is important and the ability to fulfil all the basic Git tasks (pushing, pulling, cloning, rebasing, tagging etc.) will be expected.

• Security
• The candidate will be expected to have a reasonable understanding of security best practice in web development and an appreciation of common vulnerabilities and how to mitigate them.

• Intermediate knowledge of HTML5/CSS3/SASS/JavaScript/jQuery/Responsive web design
• The role is backend focused but it’s important that candidates have an basic to intermediate appreciation of these technologies.

• Understanding of Apache/modules
• The candidate should have a reasonable understanding of the LAMP environment especially Apache and associated modules such as mod_rewrite and the use of .htaccess files.

• Deployment methods
• The backend developer will be working on large applications that are often too large for straight SFTP. Therefore a knowledge of deployment methods, basic bash scripting, tar balling would be an advantage.

Desirable skills

Experience with Drupal/CMS system

It would be highly desirable if candidates have worked with CMS systems, especially Drupal/WordPress. This is not essential for the role but may become a requirement into the future.

Understanding of regex (PCRE)

Regex often forms an intrinsic part of web applications in one form or another. Therefore an understanding of it is desirable.

Basic understanding of design packages – Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator

There is no requirement for design in this role. However, you will on occasion need to reference design files in order to carry work forward. For this reason a basic understanding of these packages is an advantage.