Front-End Developer

William Reed Ltd; Gatwick; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job summary

A global media group is seeking a skilled Front-End Developer to join their Digital Operations team in Gatwick. This hybrid role focuses on creating engaging and accessible digital experiences, ensuring seamless functionality across platforms. Candidates should possess strong front-end development skills, familiarity with React, and an understanding of performance optimization. The position includes comprehensive benefits such as additional leave days and a contributory pension scheme, fostering a supportive work environment for all employees.

Benefits

25 days annual leave plus bank holidays

Cultural celebration or birthday leave

Volunteer day

Contributory Pension

Life Assurance Scheme

Wellbeing benefits

Cycle to Work Scheme

Electric Car Scheme

Qualifications

• Demonstrated strong experience in front-end development for multiple projects.
• Experience using React in at least one project.
• Solid understanding of responsive design and performance optimisation.
• Experience testing and debugging ideally with Postman.
• Proficiency in design tools like Adobe Creative Suite or Figma.
• Experience with release management using Git Pull Processes.
• Experience in version control systems and project management tools.
• Exceptional organisational skills to manage multiple projects.

Responsibilities

• Build dynamic and multi-faceted websites for user-centric experiences.
• Convert designs into clean, semantic, and responsive HTML/CSS/SCSS code.
• Contribute to the implementation of React, Vue, and JavaScript code.
• Test and debug designs to ensure performance and accessibility standards.
• Optimise website performance to meet Core Web Vitals benchmarks.
• Document technical processes and methodologies clearly.
• Provide guidance on best practices within Jira workflow.

Skills

Strong experience in front-end development

Familiarity with React

Understanding of responsive design

Testing and debugging skills

Proficiency in design tools

Experience with Git and npm

Exceptional organizational skills

Excellent communication skills

Tools

Adobe Creative Suite

Figma

Postman

Node Package Manager (npm)

Bitbucket

Confluence

Jira

TypeScript

Tailwind CSS

Job description

Overview

Who we are We are William Reed. We are a global media group delivering exceptional content through events, digital, data & insight. From agribusiness, ingredients and food processing, to retail, hospitality & fine dining – we provide the inspiration, insight and connections to power our customers’ success. We have offices in Gatwick, Brighton and London, UK; Montpellier, France; Singapore and Chicago, US. In line with the Company’s current Agile Working Policy, the successful candidate would be eligible to work part of the week from our Gatwick office and to work remotely for the rest of the week.

Position

Position: Full time – permanent
Location: Gatwick / Hybrid

What you’ll be doing

• Front-End Developer to join our Digital Operations team. Build dynamic and multi-faceted websites to create engaging user-centric, responsive and accessible digital experiences. Support the evolution of front-end development across various digital products to ensure designs are seamlessly implemented.
• Participate in front-end development within an international B2B business, converting designs into clean, semantic, and responsive HTML/CSS/SCSS code, ensuring cross-browser and device compatibility.
• Contribute to the implementation of React, Vue and vanilla JavaScript code.
• Translate design mock-ups into high quality code. Work closely with designers to implement and optimise designs, bridging the gap between visual design and technical functionality and escalating critical gaps in project requirements or processes, when necessary, to proactively address issues.
• Test and debug designs to ensure seamless performance and adherence to accessibility standards (e.g. WCAG compliance).
• Optimise website performance to meet Core Web Vitals benchmarks, including Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
• Leverage modern development techniques such as lazy loading, efficient asset management, and CSS/JS optimisation to enhance user experience and speed.
• Work alongside testers in UAT to ensure our products work as intended.
• Efficiently triage and manage assigned tickets, maintaining accurate statuses and progress commentary to ensure team alignment.
• Document all technical processes, methodologies, and code effectively to maintain clarity for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Provide guidance and education to project managers and team members on best practices, ensuring clarity on requirements and expectations within the Jira workflow.
• Stay up-to-date with the latest web technologies, browser capabilities, and best practices to ensure designs meet or exceed performance expectations.
• Ensure smooth team operations by handling administrative tasks, such as coordinating team meetings, monitoring workloads, and resolving blockers to maintain project momentum.

Requirements

• Strong experience in front-end development for multiple projects; in theming across multiple platforms and translating design documents into fully functional code using HTML, CSS, SCSS, and JavaScript (JS) & JSON.
• Able to demonstrate using React in at least one project or experience.
• Solid understanding of responsive design and performance optimisation, including meeting Core Web Vitals benchmarks using tools such as Lighthouse or PageSpeed Insights.
• Able to demonstrate comprehensive experience of testing and debugging, ideally using Postman, experience with backend frameworks, ideally using Express and fetching and managing external data using REST API and third-party integrations.
• Proficiency in design tools like Adobe Creative Suite or Figma to ensure accurate design-to-code translation.
• Experience of release management using Git Pull Processes and managing dependencies using npm (Node Package Manager) or pnpm.
• Experience in version control systems such as Bitbucket, documentation tools such as Confluence, project management tools such as Jira and GUI Git Clients such as SourceTree is highly desirable.
• Experience with TypeScript and Tailwind CSS would be beneficial.
• Exceptional organisational skills and attention to detail, with the ability to manage multiple projects and deadlines without compromising quality.
• Collaborative mindset with regards to individual and collective code ownership and a proactive approach to identifying challenges and proposing creative, user-focused solutions.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, both written and verbal, to cultivate positive relationships with both internal and external stakeholders.
• Clear ability to communicate complex development concepts to both technical and non-technical teams.

Company Benefits and Initiatives Include

• 25 days annual leave in addition to bank holidays – increasing by one additional day after 6 years, up to a maximum of 30 days.
• An additional day of leave for you to take on a cultural celebration day or on your birthday if you like. A day for you! At William Reed, we call this our “MeDay”.
• A volunteer day to take for supporting a chosen charity and giving back to the community.
• Opportunity for hybrid working
• Contributory Pension
• Life Assurance Scheme
• Group Income Protection
• Enhanced family-friendly leave pay entitlements
• Wellbeing benefits, including: A health care cash plan, Employee assistance programme, Virtual GP service and Access to health & wellbeing resources and tools.
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Electric Car Scheme

Why work for us

We provide a supportive work environment and are committed to maintaining a healthy work/life balance for all of our employees. Working for William Reed means that you will be joining a stable organisation that is committed to developing its employees and brands.

We warmly welcome and encourage applications from talented individuals of all backgrounds and characteristics.

If you need any support in accessing this opportunity, please do not hesitate to discuss this with us.