Front End Developer

This is the perfect opportunity for an experienced Developer with 5+ years professional experience to further their career in an exceptionally creative, successful and progressive Brighton-based creative agency.

If you’re a digital thinker, innovator and doer looking to work for a purpose-led design agency in one of the UK’s most dynamic, creative and digitally ambitious cities, this one is for you.

Baxter & Bailey is a brand design agency. We’re a digitally focused, multi award-winning and ethically conscious team of ten. If you are motivated by the concept of design-for-good and have the relevant skills and experience – alongside being bright, meticulous, keen to learn and fun to work with – then we want to hear from you.

Brighton-based. Flexible terms. Salary range from £30,000 to £36,000 per annum, dependent ambition and experience.


The company


Founded by Matt Baxter and Dom Bailey in 2012, we’re currently a team of ten people specialising in the areas of brand strategy, brand identity, brand communications and brand environments. We work for all kinds of clients in all kinds of sectors, but we’re perhaps best known for our work in arts and culture, charity and non-profit, higher education, media brands and publishing.

We’re here to do the work we believe in, for clients we admire. For us, that means brand-focused design and digital communications that make a tangible difference to audiences and a positive impact in the world.

We’ve been around long enough to know that really great things only happen when both studio and client share an ambition to create something of lasting value. The point is to do work that matters. Work you care about. Work you can look back on and feel proud of. If this sounds like you, we want to hear from you.


Job description and person specification:

Guidance

This job description and person specification provides an overview of the role, responsibilities and the essential skills and experience required. It is not an exhaustive list of tasks.

The person specification provides a detailed list of the skills, knowledge, experience and attributes required to do the job.

Please provide detailed evidence and examples of how you meet the person specification in your written application. Feel free to list each one and provide relevant details of how you meet these requirements.

In addition to your CV, we very much want to understand why you want to work for Baxter & Bailey, how you will help us and what you’d personally like to achieve.



Job description

Key responsibilities

Front end development (80%)

This post-holder has a key part to play in the digital capability and reputation of our agency and needs to be able to:

• Support and collaborate with our full-time Digital Director and design team with coding on live project work

• Communicate daily with the Digital Director on project progress, updates and challenges
• Contribute with smart thinking and ideas for live projects and project proposals
• Stay tuned in on the latest developments in the digital world and self initiate your own research and learning to solve problems and learn new skills


Project management (20%)

• Support the Digital Director with project administration and research as requested and required
• Communicate and collaborate effectively with our Account Director and Design Director as part of a wider team
• Professional and polite spoken and written communication with our team 
 and our clients

Person specification

Technical skills (ESSENTIAL)



• Excellent HTML
• Excellent PHP
• Excellent CSS (SASS/SCSS and Post CSS)
• Excellent vanilla JavaScript, plus jQuery for legacy support
• Build tools/task runners
• Version control and repository management (Git)
• Extensive WordPress, ACF and WooCommerce experience inc. full custom template creation from scratch
• APIs (GraphQL, REST) and JS front-end experience required
• Web animation and interactivity experience with examples (i.e. GSAP, Lottie, CSS animation)
• Experienced meeting accessibility requirements (WCAG) in builds
• Experience documenting builds and projects
• Experienced meeting W3C standards where possible, and 
cross-browser development

• Ability to deliver performance optimisation for websites

• Hosting, server and domain management (DNS, cPanel, DB creation)

• Headless CMS + JS front-end experience (Vue, Next, Gatsby etc.) a bonus

• Shopify knowledge a bonus


Technical ambition


• Demonstrate self-driven learning and skills improvement

• Understanding of latest and future technologies (JS frameworks, headless CMS, PWA etc.) and their advantages/disadvantages


UI Skills


• Ability to confidently interpret design into build, understanding the concepts of design patterns, reusability and robust global styling systems

• Comfortable making UI build decisions (i.e. what a section will look like at mobile) based on overall designs

Technical skills (DESIRABLE)

• Familiarity with Adobe XD

• Project management skills (ESSENTIAL)
• Professional, punctual and polite
• Experience and confidence in client meetings, workshops and presentations
• Ability to manage and support other members of the digital team
• Good time-management skills and ability to work across several projects simultaneously

Prioritisation skills

• Good interpersonal skills and the ability to request support when appropriate
• Good written and verbal communication skills with close attention to detail and accuracy being extremely important
• Mac OS literate and experience in using iWork and Microsoft Office software suites
• 
Project management skills (DESIRABLE)

• Familiarity with Adobe Creative Cloud suite of software

Personal qualities and skills (ESSENTIAL)


• Passionate about the digital world
• Commitment to continued personal-development

• An appetite to develop new skills as well as existing ones, and capable of spotting opportunities to integrate learnings into live projects
• Receptive to new ideas
• Ability to work effectively independently and as part of a team
• Confident in own ability but smart enough to request help when its needed
• A strong eye for detail
• Articulate, approachable, sensitive and discreet
• A natural collaborator and problem solver
• An appetite to develop new technical skills as well as existing ones, and capable of spotting opportunities to integrate learnings into live projects
• Joined up thinking. You’re able to think steps ahead and anticipate potential issues that need to be communicated to the wider team at the earliest opportunity.



Equality and Diversity



We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise.

To find out more about equality and diversity at Baxter & Bailey, please read our Equality and Diversity policy here.


What can I expect from others?



Mentoring

I can rely on the Digital Director and the company Directors to support me in all aspects of my job. I understand that they are there to help me and that I should actively seek their knowledge and insight at key stages within a project. Their aim is to help me ensure the efficiency and quality of my work is the best it can be and to help further the prosperity of the company and my career. I expect the Digital Director and the design team to collaborate with me to deliver outstanding digital communications professionally and efficiently. I expect team members to seek input and advice from me from time-to-time. I expect them to be a constant provider of new information and ideas which inspire me in relation to my job responsibilities.


Practical help and advice

I can rely on more experienced members of the company to help and adviseme on my own personal development and ambition.


Company culture and benefits


We have a really strong company culture guided by the values of being Purposeful, Open minded and Resourceful.

25 days holiday. Included within this: The entire studio closes over the Christmas period, including Christmas Eve. A days holiday on your birthday (or nearest working day to it).

Access to the company Pension Plan.

Season ticket travel loan if required.

Our ride to work scheme supports with a cost efficient way for our team to purchase a bike for commuting to work. You can read more about our sustainability practices here.

An all team studio lunch is provided every two weeks where we all eat and 
chat together.

Our 180 initiative gives each team member on rotation 180 minutes (0.5 day) to leave the studio to do something inspiring, different or new. They share the experience with the rest of the team on their return to work.

We have two annual all-team parties. One in the Summer and one in the Winter. Recent parties have involved beach volleyball, boule tournaments, ice-skating, zip wires and curling. All our parties involve drinks, dinner with the optional invitation to gigs, dancing and the occasional karaoke sing-off.

Our Monday morning meeting aims to get the week off to an energetic start. We brew some coffee and talk about inspiring stuff we’ve seen or done or what’s hot in the world of design, art, culture and sport. We find it’s a great team-focused way to start the week.