Principal Front End Developer

About The Role
Hippo Digital is recruiting for Principal Front End Developers develop user focused, national scale services that are critical and have a high-impact on people’s lives. We apply an agile, service design approach to solving our clients’ problems, using technology to enable change. As a Front End Developer operating as a Principal Consultant in our cutting edge technical team, you will be key to making that happen

Your role in a nutshell:

• Produce quality software for a wide range of public and private sector clients
• Create secure, accessible front ends in a variety frameworks and languages adhering to best practices.
• Build to best practices using techniques such as CI/CD.
• Provide input to guide user experience design and development
• Build reusable code for future use
• Optimize web pages for maximum speed, scalability and security
• Work in an agile, collaborative, multidisciplinary team
• Build great relationships with your team and stakeholders
• Work with the hippo community to share best practice to ensure high standards
• Line management of colleagues within your profession

Skills and experience that you need
To be successful you will understand key design principles and be proficient with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Vue, Angular and jQuery. Experience of mobile app development using React Native and have a thorough understanding of web and application architectures. You will have experience of leading the development of services with a team of other developers and a good understanding of web performance, accessibility and web security best practices.

You will also have:

• experience of delivering public facing digital services for a wide range of end users
• be able to articulate complex technical problems and approaches to a wider audience
• understand user centred design principles and practices
• enjoy working collaboratively with your team and experts
• be comfortable working in rapid sprint cycles
• have a positive “can do” attitude
• have great consultancy skills, caring about your client’s needs and motivations
• enjoy sharing your skills and experience with your client to enable them to continue to iterate and improve their product or service after you leave
• embrace line management responsibilities and supporting colleagues

It would be great if you also have:

• Public sector experience, preferably working to the Government Service Standard
• Experience with a user centred design approach.
• Experience developing services for mobile and offline users
• Have an aspiration to share knowledge with junior developers and the wider consultancy.
• Be a keen technologist, with an eye for detail and opportunities to apply new technologies where applicable.

What makes us great
As well as a competitive salary which we’re transparent about from the outset, you can also expect a range of benefits:

• Contributory pension scheme (Hippo 6% with employee contributions of 2%)
• 25 days holiday plus UK public holidays
• Perkbox access for a wide range of discounts
• Critical illness cover
• Life assurance and death in service cover
• Volunteer days
• Cycle-to-work scheme for the avid cyclists
• Salary sacrifice electric vehicles scheme
• Season ticket loans
• Financial and general wellbeing sessions
• Flexible benefits scheme with options of:
• private health cover
• private dental cover
• additional company pension contributions
• additional holidays (up to an extra 2 days)
• wellbeing contribution
• charity contributions
• tree planting

Hi, we’re Hippo.
We are a full-service digital consultancy. We deliver meaningful transformation by combining data-informed evidence, human-centred design and digital engineering. By combining all three disciplines, we approach problems on a human level and provide end-to-end solutions, solving whole problems for organisations from concept to reality, supporting innovation and continuous improvement.

We partner with our customers to successfully delivers transformational programmes and help them thrive as modern digital organisations. With a strong people-focused culture and vibrant community, Hippo continues expanding its portfolio of public-sector and private-sector customers. We aspire to add value and leave a lasting benefit within those institutes. Our philosophy is to ensure the user is at the core of everything we do, research, design and deliver. Collaborating with us means embracing a digital-first strategy with people-first design, which will genuinely create lasting change and positive impact.

What makes Hippo unique is our amazing people and the great culture that we have built. Join the Hippo herd on our journey to make the world more accessible.

Hippo locations
Our Hippo offices are in Leeds, London, Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester. However, we invite candidates to apply from anywhere in the UK who can be flexible regarding location. We offer a relocation support package of up to £8k to help cover the cost of moving somewhere within commuting distance of one of our locations. Please note that due to the nature of the business, we may also request that you work from client locations or your home.

How Hippo Digital embraces diversity and equal opportunity
Hippo Digital is committed to diversity, equality and inclusion. For us, diversity and inclusion are not just tick-boxing activities but a chance to make meaningful long-term changes. A diverse workforce means we can unlock our ability to innovate, be creative, be better problem solvers and provide an inclusive environment for everyone. We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply.

Job Type: Permanent

Salary: £79,800.00-£99,750.00 per year

Schedule:

• Monday to Friday

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Birmingham