Freelance Principal Full Stack Engineer

At AKQA, we believe in the imaginative application of art and science to create beautiful ideas, products and services. With an entrepreneurial and collaborative approach, we design adaptive digital services and applications that capture the imagination, delivering immersive experiences for our clients.

The studio is located in London (Farringdon) with remote working as an option.

You should be a stand-out Fullstack Web Engineer and practitioner of the latest web technologies; building best in class web applications for a range of enterprise clients across different verticals, serving users at scale on the modern web landscape, whatever that may be.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Hands on development on a large scale enterprise web application.
• Establish a solid foundation in the setup phase of the project before assisting with the onboarding and mentoring of the wider team.
• Work closely with others to ensure good collaboration across all disciplines and to facilitate the solving of day-to-day challenges.
• Collaborate, coach and mentor other team members whilst maintaining high levels of productivity.
• Work closely with the Technical Architect to deliver the designed solution.
• Work closely with the Quality Assurance Manager and Automation Engineer to ensure a thorough test automation framework is implemented.
• Understand client’s business goals and objectives in order to build the right technical solutions.
• Minimise technical risk and ensure a high-quality output.
• Identify bottlenecks within delivery processes as they occur and be able to help influence behaviours within the team to help resolve these and protect the technical delivery.
• Operating in Lean and Agile methodologies or Hybrid approaches.

You will be a self-starting technologist who can draw parallels across a technology landscape and isn’t restricted by a specific skill set. However below is a list of skill sets we would expect;

ROLE REQUIREMENTS

• Extensive Next.js application development experience on enterprise projects using React and TypeScript.
• Strong Contentful Headless Content Management experience, including multi-space solutions and internationalisation (i18n).
• Experience in consuming and implementing design systems, abstracting third-party design libraries using advanced CSS, CSS modules and associated technologies.
• Development of frontend components to a high performance, accessibility (a11y) and web standards compliant level.
• Microservice and event-driven architecture implementation and API development, particularly on AWS infrastructure.
• Node, common node libraries and frameworks, npm module consumption and publishing.
• Containerisation with Docker and a solid understanding of ensuring scalability and resilience in hosting Node.js applications.
• Development and consumption of HTTP APIs such as RESTful and GraphQL.

QUALIFICATIONS & CHARACTERISTICS

• Computer Science Degree or equivalent industry experience.
• 10+ years’ industry experience.
• Proven experience with onboarding other team members, explaining technical design and helping break down technical tasks to distributed teams.
• Advocate for improvements to processes, quality, and security.
• Analytical and positive mindset with a personable and professional approach.
• Sharp attention to detail and a passion for new technology.
• Be able to talk for Yourself, expressing opinions backed up by reasoned argument.
• Be able to talk for Technology to Non-technical audiences such as clients, stakeholders, and non-technical team members (especially UX & Creative).
• Advocate of Technical Delivery methodologies such as Agile (SCRUM & KANBAN).

AKQA is an Equal Opportunities Employer, we believe that diversity is vital to AKQA’s ability to provide our clients with the best recommendations and are committed to fostering a varied and inclusive work environment. Your race, colour, ancestry, religion, gender, gender identity, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or veteran status have no bearing on our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.