Future PLC

The Senior DBA is a key support role within the IT function, in addition to supporting the day to day operation of the Savings Website databases, it is also a key enabler for reviewing, defining and supporting strategic database technologies and initiatives. Providing continued support to the business and engineering teams through this function, the role will be to provide technical support and consultation to the various stakeholders ensuring the delivery of pragmatic and cost-effective technology solutions. Focus will be technology agnostic, delivering business value through the most appropriate use of technology. You will work closely with key senior leaders to ensure IT services are fit for purpose, consistent and adding value to our fast-paced and growing enterprise. Key Responsibilities Providing technical oversight to the Database Administration function and corporate tech teams to ensure stability and supportability of environments and services are maintained. Be a key contributor and role model within the IT Service Leadership team, ensuring that changes to Database and data services are in line with operational and strategic plans. Work closely with Heads of IT, to ensure that demand planning feeds into a robust capacity and strategic architectural plan Ensures the stability and availability of production databases within agreed targets Monitors the production, development and test databases for performance to ensure that future volume is handled as required Carries out regular performance testing and tuning to ensure all production systems are optimised Ensures SQL platforms are continually updated and upgraded to remain within supported versions. Supports the Infrastructure Solutions Manager with the development of technology roadmaps for all database systems. Work with peers and senior stakeholders for Service Continuity (BCP & DR) Plan ensuring suitable arrangements are in place in the event of significant service disruption Mentors, coaches and develops members of the team to continuously develop skills, processes and standards. Requirements: Experienced production database administration covering Microsoft SQL Server 2016, including both Standard and Enterprise editions. Educated to degree level or equivalent professional experience in a Technology Manager/Architect role Excellent knowledge of MS SQL Server Clustering, LogShipping, Replication and/or AOAG. Excellent understanding and experience in performance/capacity tuning/monitoring, optimisation, diagnosing and rectifying performance and/or capacity related problems Excellent T-SQL skills, Index strategies, including both query and server optimisation Excellent understanding of storage IO, SAN, Windows Clustering, SSAS, SQL CLR/Service Broker & PowerShell Solid understanding of Cloud based Database solutions, including Managed Instances MSSQL/MySQL. Proven track record of managing complex SQL database environments and implementing SQL upgrades Experience in operating within a managed hosting and/or cloud environment Experience in a regulated industry, preferably financial Excellent communication skills with experience of liaising with technical colleagues, senior leadership, key business stakeholders and suppliers. Be able to explain complex issues succinctly and with clarity, both in writing or orally. Experience in an IT environment with a good documentation culture, including change management processes. Able to work under pressure and meet deadlines Able to manage and prioritise and tasks and time efficiently.

About the Team We are Future, a global multi-platform media company with big ambitions and the talent to bring them to life. Together, we connect people to their passions through the high-quality content we create and the innovative technology we pioneer. We’re the name behind award-winning brands in specialist sectors like technology, gaming & entertainment, music, creative & photography, field sports, knowledge and home interest. Specialists in our field and passionate about what we do, every year we attract millions of consumers to our websites, magazines, events and social spaces. Future’s Technology department has been instrumental in the company’s success over recent years and is vital to Future’s continued growth and disruption of the digital publishing industry. As part of the strategy around GoComapre’s acquisition by Future we’re putting in a technology roadmap for re-platforming our domain around an API first, cloud based serverless architecture to become the PCW leading service. This is part of our plan to broaden the scope from the GoCompare brand. Job Purpose As Senior Tech Lead, you will be part of the senior engineering leadership team. Your focus will be on leading a team of engineers and working within the wider engineering team to drive the technical direction of the platform. In this role Tech Leads and Senior Engineers will look to your experience and detailed product knowledge to progress our re-platforming in a meaningful and quantifiable way. In this role you will be jointly responsible for the direction of the architecture, software delivery and leadership of the team. You will be influential in the wider team decision making for resolving technical debt & solution delivery. You will set requirements which determine the technical specification of new features and services, as well as ensure that the team consistently maintain and improve the existing codebase. You will ensure that Tech Leads and Senior Engineers make changes that are scalable, tested, and well structured in line with industry best practices. Working closely with Engineering, Product, UX, QA and Project Management (PMO) teams you will ensure that all applications integrate reliably. You will also be expected to lead & mentor Tech Leads, Junior, Mid and Senior Engineers contributing to their growth, knowledge, and reviewing their code. In this role your time will be predominantly scoping, meeting and guiding your teams. The role will be split 80:20, where there is an expectation that for 20% of your time you are able to be hands-on, contributing to the re-platforming of our service. You will be responsible for delegating tasks and working with other Tech Leads & Senior Tech Leads / Directors of Engineering to ensure that the business / tech priorities are respected. Key Responsibilities In collaboration with other Senior Tech Leads, Tech Leads and Engineers you will ensure your team’s code is well scoped, monitored, documented and testable. You will be responsible for the code quality of your teams, ensuring that the code is maintainable and extensible. You will lead on tracing bugs across the stack and ensuring that suitable tests are set up to avoid future regressions. And work closely with QA to ensure the risk of future occurrences is reduced. You will work to guide your teams in how to review both their own code and other developers’ before it goes through a final QA process and into production. You will ensure that your team members are working efficiently and delivering to the best of their ability. You will communicate effectively with the wider business and be able to critically assess product requirements and solutions. You will keep up to date with the latest approaches to development and be able to argue for appropriate technology to be added to the stack. You will participate in regular hack days, using cutting edge tech to prototype innovative approaches to business/technical goals. As the senior tech lead you are required to support and help develop more junior members of staff both via code review/direction and mentoring. You will nurture the professional development of your team members through regular 1:1s, coaching and supporting their career development. You will line manage Tech Lead(s) and will ultimately be responsible for the underlying teams under the direction of the Tech Lead(s) within your remit.

Future’s Technology department has been instrumental in the company’s success over recent years and is vital to Future’s continued growth and disruption of the digital publishing industry. As part of the strategy around GoComapre’s acquisition by Future we’re putting in a technology roadmap for re-platforming our domain around an API first, cloud based serverless architecture to become the PCW leading service. This is part of our plan to broaden the scope from the GoCompare brand. Job Purpose As a Lead QA in our Systems Team you’ll work closely with teams across engineering to ensure the delivery of scalable, well structured, efficient applications, services and components; working on both green-field projects built from the ground up using the latest libraries and best practice as well guiding on best practice, maintaining and improving existing code within our legacy stack. You will be responsible for expanding the breadth and depth of our automated testing coverage, as well as leading our engineering teams on the automation discipline. Crucially you’ll also be someone who can educate and train our Engineering team and understand at Functional and Non-Functional Quality and be able to define and set the quality gates for the our Ci/CD Pipeline Key Responsibilities You will take overall responsibility for defining the Quality Gates across our SDLC and will set the criteria into the CI/CD pipeline for the whole platform In collaboration with Tech Leads and Engineers you will ensure our testing stack is well scoped, monitored, reported and documented. You will ensure that QA engineers & Dev engineers are working on the right areas of the stack and have the correct skills to ensure good test coverage. You will be responsible for the QA across engineering defining the QA Strategy and setting the Quality Standards and Gates are defined and managed You will also be responsible for analysing bugs across the stack and ensuring that suitable tests are set up to avoid future regressions. You will work with the rest of the team to review both your code, QA engineering and software engineers code before it is committed into our repositories. You will be able to communicate effectively with the wider business and be able to critically assess product requirements and solutions. Test scope will cover both client and server-side code working with datastores and server configuration. You will be keen to keep up to date with the latest approaches to software engineering and be given the opportunity to improve and updated the QA stack as appropriate You will participate in regular hack days, using cutting edge tech to prototype innovative approaches to business/technical goals. As an experienced member of the team you are required to support and help develop more junior members of staff both via peer review/direction and mentoring.