Junior Developer

Forge Holiday Group; Chester; Hybrid; GBP 25,000 - 30,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading vacation company in Chester is seeking a Junior Developer to join their technology team. This role offers support and growth, focusing on quality code and collaboration on features. Candidates should have some commercial development experience and familiarity with PHP and React JS. The position offers a flexible hybrid working policy, competitive salary, and a variety of benefits including annual bonuses and extensive holidays. Join a company committed to innovation within a passionate team.

Benefits

Annual bonus scheme

33 days’ holiday

Enhanced parental leave

Health cash plan

On-site gym

Employee savings scheme

Qualifications

• Commercial experience in software engineering is essential.
• Good understanding of OOP principles and design patterns.
• Familiarity with PHP frameworks such as Laravel or Symfony is a must.

Responsibilities

• Develop scalable solutions for internal and external use.
• Ensure quality delivery of software products into business.
• Engage in sprint planning and retrospectives.
• Review and coach colleagues on code submissions.
• Investigate new technologies for potential business advantages.

Skills

Software engineering experience

Understanding of OOP

PHP MVC frameworks knowledge

MySQL expertise

React JS or foundational front-end technologies

Experience with REST APIs

Tools

AWS

Docker

GitHub Actions

Job description

Forge Your Success with Us! 💻

• 💰Salary: Up to £30,000 per annum.
• 🕒Work Days & Hours: Monday to Friday, 9am until 5:30pm, 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: Lead Developer
• 🚨Closing Date: Monday 8th December

We’re on the lookout for a Junior Developer to join our award-winning Technology Team at The Forge Holiday Group. If you're ready to learn, innovate, and grow alongside some of the brightest tech minds in the North West, this is the opportunity for you!

We truly are the best and brightest, who eat, sleep and breathe tech and are united in nurturing our rich culture of innovation, discovering new ways of doing things and our newest Developers will be an ongoing driving force in our quest to become a data driven business and best in the 'biz for what we do!

About The Role:

We’re looking for an enthusiastic Junior Developer, who HAS already begun building their skills in software development and are eager to take the next steps. In this role, you’ll be supported by our experienced teams as you continue to grow, writing quality code, collaborating on new features and diving into real-world technical challenges.

You’ll have the confidence to work independently on small tasks and will get involved with larger projects alongside expert colleagues. You’ll take a hands‑on approach to problem solving, giving and receiving feedback, while developing your technical knowledge.

We guarantee to welcome you with open arms to one of our varied 'Squads', pushing your personal development and nurturing your individual skills to be instantly recognisable in your contribution within our sociable, passionate team.

This isn’t just another Developer role, it’s the start of something big.

What’s in it for You:

• 🎉Annual bonus scheme linked to company performance.
• 🌴33 days’ holiday (including bank holidays).
• 🎂Birthday day off + 2 volunteering days per year.
• 👶Enhanced parental leave (24 weeks maternity, 3 weeks paternity at full pay).
• 🏡Discounts on stays with our brands + wellbeing offers.
• ❤️🩹Health cash plan, life assurance & 24/7 mental health support.
• 📈Training & development opportunities.
• 🏋️♂️On‑site gym and parking at Chester HQ (close to the train station).
• 💷Employee savings scheme + long service awards.
• 🌟Proudly one of only 1,000 B Corp‑certified companies in the UK.

Responsibilities:

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

• Create well crafted, scalable and resilient solutions used both by colleagues and the public.
• Own the delivery of software into the business.
• Participate in sprint planning to deliver regular iterations, and retrospectives to improve our processes.
• Promote software development best practices.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders to clarify ambiguous requirements and taking corrective action for issues in production.
• Perform exploratory work to investigate new technologies that we can leverage to solve business problems, as well as sizing changes to our existing platform.
• Reviewing colleagues’ code submissions, coaching enhancements, encouraging standards and identifying bugs.
• Creating well crafted, resilient solutions which are used throughout the business and by the public.
• Taking corrective action for any issues with our existing systems.Taking responsibility for the quality and efficacy of their code, from inception to completion, and ensuring that systems are monitored effectively to maximise business continuity.
• Working closely with team colleagues to improve their programming skills.

Skills & Qualifications:

• Experience with software engineering in a commercial setting.
• A good understanding of OOP and awareness of common software design patterns.
• Experience of PHP MVC frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony or CodeIgniter.
• A strong grasp of MySQL with the ability to identify problematic or costly queries.
• Experience of React JS or other foundational front‑end technologies e.g Vanilla Javascript/jQuery, HTML, CSS.
• Experience with REST APIs.

Nice to Have

• AWS experience (ideally ECS).
• Bitbucket Pipelines or GitHub Actions.
• Tailwind or similar styling frameworks.
• UNIX command line skills.
• Understanding of microservices.
• Docker experience.
• TDD in commercial projects.
• Agile methodologies (e.g., Scrum).

About Forge Holiday Group:

Forge Holiday Group unites three amazing brands - Sykes Holidays, Forest Holidays, and Bachcare (NZ), under one mission: to make it easier and more rewarding for people to enjoy unforgettable holidays.

With a team of 1,700 colleagues and four values at our heart - One Business One Team, Keep It Simple, Grow & Learn, Sustainable Impact - we’re shaping the future of travel while building a sustainable, values‑driven business for our guests, owners, and people.

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!