Senior Developer

About the Role

Lead with impact and forge the future of travel tech as a Senior Developer at Forge Holiday Group

• Salary: Circa £55,000 per annum.
• Work Days & Hours: Monday to Friday, 37.5 hours per week.
• Working Policy: Flexible hybrid-working policy, with a minimum of two days a week from our Chester head office.
• Team: Development Team.
• Reports to: Head of Development.

About Us

The Forge Holiday Group encompasses Sykes Holiday Cottages, Forest Holidays, UKcaravans4hire and Bachcare in New Zealand. We unite under four core company values that serve as the foundation of everything we do: Being One Team, Owning It, Communicating Honestly. Learning, Growing, and Innovating. These values ensure we remain true to our original ethos and ensure we stay true to our Customers, Owners and

About the Senior Developer Role

We are proud to be a technical powerhouse with a tech team that drives innovation across mobile apps for iOS and Android, our Ecommerce platform, and the Holiday Letting app that we built in-house. We're now looking for our newest Senior Developer, whose standout skills in Software Development and talent in PHP MVC frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony or CodeIgniter will continue our trend for success all the while growing their technical skills soaking up the wealth of passion around you!

This truly is a fantastic opportunity for an experienced Developer to make their mark within our team, applying your technical skills to our ongoing projects, sharing your knowledge with the rest of the team, whilst taking on a new challenge within our senior tech team.

In return we guarantee to welcome you with open arms as a driving force within one of our varied 'Squads', showcasing your technical ability and leading, mentoring and coaching a talented and eager team of Developers, recognising your contribution within our ambitious projects.

Your Responsibilities

We are entering the next exciting phase of our technical growth which will see our newest Senior Developer:

• Create well crafted, scalable and resilient solutions used both by colleagues and the public
• Own the delivery of software into the business
• 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.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders to clarify ambiguous requirements and taking corrective action for issues in production.
• Conduct sprint planning to deliver regular iterations and retrospectives to improve our processes.
• Facilitate daily stand ups to ensure team and business alignment.
• Line manage a team of developers, conduct one-to-ones, manage probationary periods and ensure growth and training needs are met.
• Promote software development best practices.
• Review colleagues’ code submissions, coach enhancements, encourage standards and identify bugs.

Skills and Qualifications

We are looking for those who can share in our company goals, values and ethos, who can grow alongside us and whose skills can aid our ongoing success!

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.

Essential Experience:

• Vast experience of Software Engineering in a commercial setting
• Experience of PHP MVC frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony or CodeIgniter
• Experience of using Test Driven Development in commercial projects;
• Demonstrable record of delivering high-quality object-oriented code and using SOLID principles;
• A strong grasp of MySQL with the ability to identify problematic or costly queries;
• Experience of React JS as well as other foundational front-end technologies e.g Vanilla Javascript/jQuery, HTML, CSS;
• Experience of Agile development methodologies e.g. Scrum
• Experience with REST APIs including less common HTTP Verbs.

Nice to have:

• Experience with many aspects of Amazon Web Services, ideally ECS
• Exposure to Continuous Delivery tools such as Bamboo or Jenkin
• Front-end styling frameworks such as SASS & Bootstrap
• UNIX command line
• An understanding of microservice architectures
• Docker containers

Forge Holiday Groups Company Benefits

• Access to our annual STIP (annual company-wide bonus) scheme with up to 20% addition of your salary
• 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
• Employee discounts and benefits with your wellbeing at the centre
• Comprehensive training and development programs to set you up for success
• 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

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.

Diversity and Inclusion:

We encourage and welcome our people to bring their authentic and best selves to work every day. We know the power that comes from different ideas, backgrounds and perspectives. We recognise the role diversity plays in achieving our goals as a business. We actively welcome applications from as wide a range of backgrounds as possible. If you need any particular support or accommodations as part of your application process, please get in touch - our recruitment team are happy to help.

Apply now to be a part of our inclusive and supportive work environment, where you'll find excellent opportunities for career progression and personal development!