Senior Software Engineer

Job Description

About Us

We started Goodlord because we wanted to make renting simple and transparent for everyone involved: the agent, landlord and tenant.

We're a PropTech scale-up who have created a revolutionary, cloud-based software platform to bring together agents, landlords and tenants online and process all the paperwork electronically. And in the past year we’re proud to have been recognised as a Great Place to work.

• 9th in Deloitte’s UK Technology Fast 50
• 20th Great Place to Work in the UK medium-sized businesses
• 11th in the UK for great medium-sized workplaces for tech
• 12th in the UK for great medium-sized workplaces for women
• Excellence in wellbeing for our dedication to goodlordian’s wellbeing

The Engineering Team

The application is built in the backend mainly in PHP (7.4/8) Symfony applications with a number of other minor services in Scala and Python. The frontend is evolving into React + Typescript from an old jQuery UI which is currently disappearing. All of this is deployed in Docker containers running in a Kubernetes cluster in AWS.

The engineering team consists of a group of squads working independently in different parts of the application but still supporting each other as a single team. Each squad comprises a product manager, designer, and a mix of frontend and backend engineers.

We are keen advocates of clean code, agile delivery, and continuous integration. We use PHPUnit for unit testing, Behat to test our endpoints in a BDD manner, and Cypress for end-to-end testing. We employ features of the language to write strongly typed code and use PHPStan for static analysis. All of these checks are automated by our CI pipeline using Circle CI and Github Actions ensuring we can confidently do multiple deploys per day.

Your day to day

No two days are ever the same at Goodlord so what you’ll be up to will vary. The pace we move at also means priorities will change and you’ll need to be comfortable with this (we’ll support you!). But these are the things that will be core to your role and will keep you busy.

• Work with Product Managers, business stakeholders and other Engineers to understand end user problems and implement appropriate solutions.
• Use your knowledge of the PHP and Symfony ecosystems as well as current best practices to continuously improve the platform and migrate legacy implementations of the code base.
• Address issues raised within the application that prevent users from achieving their goals.
• Review the code of your colleagues.
• Offer mentoring to less experienced developers
• Identify bottlenecks in the development process and suggest/implement improvements.
• Add tooling to improve developer quality of life.
• Perform self defined tasks geared towards your personal and professional development.

** This role can be primarily based in London HQ (Hybrid working as standard) OR fully remote - 5 days per quarter in the office**

What we need from you:

• Significant experience in building complex web applications using Symfony, Laravel or other modern web framework (doesn’t have to be PHP).
• Proficient with advanced software engineering design and architecture principles, patterns and practices.
• Track record of writing automated tests using frameworks such as PHPUnit, Behat or PHPSpec.
• Strong knowledge of web application security and how to guard against common vulnerabilities.
• Confident at debugging issues in local and production environments and across system boundaries.
• Strong communication skills and can adapt to the technical level of your audience.
• Focused on providing value, solving end user problems and having a real impact on the organization.
• Biased towards collaboration.
• Open to learning new languages, technologies and ways of working.
• Any experience with the following would be a bonus: Typescript, React, Functional Programming, DDD, Test automation, AWS, DevOps. We're also happy for you to learn these on the job.

Why you'll love being a Goodlordian

Aside from the role, the people, our culture and our mission, we have some other things that make Goodlord a pretty awesome place to be. Here’s a few favourites amongst Goodlordians (check out our careers page for more info).

• Grow with Goodlord: your development is important to us. Have a goal in mind? Share it with us and you can use your £1000 annual development fund to support it. We guarantee you’ll learn loads and develop both personally and professionally at Goodlord too!
• Your well-being matters: bi-weekly coaching with Sanctus to provide Goodlordians with a safe place to talk and support your mental health
• Unlimited holiday and flexible time off: we encourage Goodlordians to make use of their unlimited time off to enjoy the world, recharge and reboot. We also offer time off for volunteering and training, so you can give back to the community and pursue your passions
• Supporting your family: we offer Goodlordians of all genders a generous 3 months of fully-paid time off to look after their new arrivals
• Saving you money: access to thousands of discounts (cinema, travel, retail to name a few)
• Our team: we’re an energetic, sociable and talented bunch who are super passionate about what we do and determined to make a difference. We’re all in it together, we learn from each other, we’re genuine and we don’t have time for politics

The Interview Process

For more information, Donovan, our CTO, has written a blog post that goes in depth into our interview process: https://blog.goodlord.co/careers/how-goodlord-recruits-engineers.

Goodlord wants applicants from all backgrounds and walks of life, we are an equal opportunity employer committed to creating an inclusive environment.

In fact one of our core values is Bring our whole selves to work which is really important to us, if there is anything you need to participate fully in the interview process we'd like to hear about that too, please just include it in your application. Come join us!

Unfortunately, Sponsorship is not available for this role.

Strictly NO Agencies

We reserve the right to close this role if we receive a high volume of suitable applications.

** Please note, as we are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, all Goodlordians are required to pass a thorough referencing check via Experian before joining the team. We will only ask for references at the point of making an offer **