Lead Front End Shopify Engineer needed on a contract basis, to join our VML Enterprise Solutions Engineering team. 

The opportunity:

To work as a Lead Shopify Developer on an exciting fast paced account, for our client who is a global leader in the health and hygiene market, supporting other developers within the account whilst taking ownership in key tech decisions.

What you’ll be doing:

• Creating high quality production-ready front-end code with Shopify
• Creating reusable Shopify components and theme areas
• Architectural decisions to be agreed with Front-end Architect, then implemented and maintained on the project to ensure consistency and quality
• Drive forward the quality – in code, unit testing, accessibility, performance, code reviews
• Engaging with the client to understand new requirements or issues and being able to clearly and credibly present potential solutions
• Ensure a smooth connection with Marketing Tools, Platform APIs, and Shopify Apps to optimise the shop for overall efficiency and functionality
• Lead an Agile workstream of front-end developers on a project, contributing to daily stand-ups, sprint planning and estimates
• Ability to converse confidently with technical and non-technical colleagues
• Build modular layouts, reusable code and libraries for future use
• Comfortable with a mix of Team Lead responsibilities, effective management of workload, mentoring junior members of the team
• Work with the design teams to create optimal front-end user experiences, leading to driving greater conversions
• Collaborating with technical and non-technical colleagues to escalate issues and highlight any areas that need wider team action
• Cooperate with design and marketing teams to gather and refine specifications and requirements for development
• Be involved in existing and new integrations for the platform
• Full end-to-end ownership from idea to delivery, covering ongoing maintenance, expansion and scaling
• Stay current with evolving standards and technologies, learning new skills as needed
• Support of the recruitment process in technical tests and team fit assessments

What we want from you:

• Solid understanding of the Agile methodology i.e. Story point estimation, refinement, sprint planning, retrospective, sprint demos
• Mastery of semantic HTML5, CSS3 (SASS or LESS) and JavaScript (ES6+) adhering to industry defined coding standards
• Extensive experience with the Shopify platform and the Liquid templating engine
• A desire to write readable, maintainable, modular, and extendable code
• Be an expert in all aspects of the Shopify ECommerce platform
• Experience of pair programming
• Have extensive testing and debugging abilities using the browser console and other tools
• Knowledge of current trends and best practices in front-end architecture, including performance optimization, accessibility, SEO, security and usability
• Experience of linter/formatter tooling eg ESlint/Prettier etc
• Commercial experience of using GIT in a large development team performing Continuous Integration
• Excellent communication skills and capability to interact directly with the team and stakeholders
• Proficient understanding of fluid responsive layouts, cross-browser and cross-device compatibility issues
• Commercial experience of unit testing/End to end testing/regression testing (we use Jest and Cypress)
• Have previous experience implementing/debugging third-party Shopify apps, as well as building unique solutions if needed
• Familiarity with modern front-end build pipelines and tools such as Grunt and webpack
• Have working knowledge of third-party services and APIs, as well as Shopify plugins
• Willingness to contribute to both large, complex projects and smaller tasks as directed.
• Experience of mentoring junior members of the team
• Great attitude, self-motivated, strong work ethic, with strong ownership
• Have experience of solving bespoke customer issues within the Shopify platform

If you know some of this, even better:

• Commercial experience in building headless solutions e.g SPA and/or PWA applications
• Experience in building rapid prototypes
• Experience with a Type Checking language either Flow or TypeScript (we use TypeScript)
• Experience creating site architecture diagrams, wireframes, process flows
• Experience of working on Java/Node/C#/PHP projects would be beneficial

In return, this is what you can expect from us:

• Private health insurance package (for employees working with us for a year and more)
• International and in-house training possibilities
• Education budget to suit your own development
• International projects
• Diverse teams (in 2023 our office has the the 'Most diverse Company' special award in the Loveable Workplace competition)

And there's more:

• Kid and dog friendly office
• Annual team building days and many fun events
• Award-winning and well-equipped office

Our Enterprise Solutions division houses strategic consultants, creative and technical architects and skilled developers and operators that together help some of the world’s leading organisations to deliver outstanding digital experiences across all major routes to market worldwide: marketplaces, online retailers, D2C, B2B and social platforms. With over 4,200 experts in 55 operational centres across 34 countries, our capabilities span the entire buying journey from customer acquisition, through engagement, to conversion and loyalty, driving multi-channel growth for world-leading brands.

We work with some of the most exciting brands such as The Coca-Cola Company, EY, Bosch, Unilever, Ford, DFS, Mercedes-Benz, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Sainsbury’s, Selfridges, Shell and Tiffany & Co. We’ve built over 500 platforms for brands and retailers and generate in excess of $29bn annually for our clients and work with over 50 strategic partners including Adobe, SAP, Salesforce, HCL, Shopify, Sitecore, BigCommerce, commerce tools and Acquia. Our reputation is based on our people, and we believe we have some of the best in the business.

As our business grows internationally, we’re looking for new people to join us on our journey to inspire and take a key role in shaping some of the best commerce solutions, services, and websites in the world. Working as a team, no problem is insurmountable; we share in our client’s successes and believe that anyone can show creative bravery no matter what their role is in the team.