Lead Developer

Joining our newly-formed central services, we are now recruiting a forward-thinking, autonomous individual to step into our newly-created Lead Developer position taking up a crucial role within our Technology department.
Working across the Forge Holiday Group, including Forest Holidays, UKCaravansforHire, Bachcare and Sykes Holiday Cottages, our newest driven Leader will drive a team of Developers and Testers whilst owning the delivery of software across the business.

• Paying a salary up to £58,300 per annum working 5 days a week, Monday-Friday
• Plus access to our annual STIP (annual company-wide bonus) scheme with an additional 20% of your salary
• A flexible hybrid-working policy working a min 2 days from our Chester HQ, with occasional travel to Derby as and when required
• 33 days annual leave including bank holidays
• Plus an additional day off for your Birthday
• Plus an additional two volunteering days per year
• An enhanced maternity and paternity policy
• Personal development and opportunities to be recognised
• Study support for additional qualifications, courses and accreditations
• Numerous dedicated wellbeing initiatives and access to 24/7 mental health support
• On-site gym at our Chester HQ
• Regular social events including weekly Breakfast Club and 'Bring your Dog to Work' day!

This is a crucial role in our team which will see you drive forward our rich culture of progression and innovation. As our newest Leader, you will work to continuously investigate new technologies to leverage business problems as well as sizing changes to our existing platform. Alongside this, you will be working on behalf of the team to collaborate with key business stakeholders to clarify requirements and taking action to deliver key projects and initiatives on time.
This is the ideal opportunity for those looking to take their next step into a vital leadership role within our department, showcasing their management and leadership skills alongside those in .NET frameworks, C# and relavent technologies within a commercial setting.

Reporting into the Head of Software, our newest Lead will become a key player within our Technology team, responsible for:

• Line manage a team of developers and testers, conduct one-to-ones, manage probationary periods and ensure growth and training needs are met.?
• Own the delivery of software into the business?
• Conduct sprint planning to deliver regular iterations and retrospectives to improve our processes.?
• Facilitate daily stand ups to ensure team and business alignment.?
• Collaborate with business stakeholders to clarify ambiguous requirements and taking corrective action for issues in production.?
• Review colleague's code submissions, coach enhancements, encourage standards and identify bugs.?
• Create well crafted, scalable and resilient solutions used both by colleagues and the public?
• Perform exploratory work to investigate new technologies that we can leverage to solve business problems, as well as well as sizing changes to our existing platform.?
• Promote software development best practices.?
• Liaise with business and team to organise releases, including communicating release notes.
• Support product owner with prioritisation of deliverables

All we ask is you to have the following key skills:

• Experience of .NET framework with C# and related technologies?
• At least five year's experience of software engineering in a commercial setting?
• Experience of Agile development methodologies e.g. Scrum?
• Experience of using Test Driven Development in commercial projects?
• Demonstrable record of delivering high-quality object-oriented code and using SOLID principles?

Although standouts will also have:

• Previous experience leading Developers and Testers??
• Exposure to many aspects of Azure Services, function apps, logic apps, Azure cache
• Exposure to Continuous Delivery tools such as Azure DevOps?
• Experience with REST APIs including less common HTTP Verbs?
• Experience with Postgres and MSSQL with the ability to identify problematic or costly queries;?
• Experience of React JS as well as other foundational front-end technologies e.g JavaScript TypeScript, HTML, CSS;
• Exposure to Front-end styling frameworks such as Material UI
• Exposure to Redux
• An understanding of microservice architectures?

The Forge Holiday Group
The Forge Holiday Group encompasses Sykes Holiday Cottages, Forest Holidays, UKcaravans4hire and Bachcare in New Zealand and unites us under four company values, which are the foundations of every aspect of our business and remain at the heart of everything we do. By Being One Team, Owning it, Communicating Honestly and showcasing a devotion to Learning, Growing and Innovating, we remain true to our original ethos and ensure we stay true to our Customers, Owners and Colleagues alike.