The Senior Engineer is responsible for complex tasks and completing them despite roadblocks; grabbing others for help or insight as necessary. They require very little oversight beyond high-level direction. They can take a complex user story, break it down into tasks, and complete them with relative ease. An important focus of this level is having a direct understanding of the users of their software, whether they be customers, or other Engineers on the team. A team member at this level is always seeking out the context and must understand the “why” of a particular feature. They use their understanding of the business and the user to influence their task prioritization.

This role is well suited to people who are focused on becoming great engineers, learning how to set high quality bars for their work without sacrificing productivity. It’s well suited to engineers who want to be empowered as an integral part of the team to help them achieve common goals. They should thrive working in a dynamic, fast moving and challenging (and somewhat ambiguous) environment.

Core Responsibilities

• Requirements Analysis and Design -  

• Contributes to the process of requirements gathering with various stakeholders (Product Owners, Delivery and Support functions, Product Management, Operations team etc.), with a focus on technical feasibility. 
• Attend and contribute to discussions and backlog refinement (scope, acceptance criteria and architecture definition), driving the discussion when required. 
• Translates functional and non-functional requirements into technical requirements. 
• Responsible for the technical design and estimation of new features taking into consideration risks in alignment with process and team standards. 
• Works with Lead Developers and Architects to design the components of the product suite, then provides technical guidance to the engineering teams. 
• Responsible for producing both low-level and high-level design documents according to the product needs. 

• Development -  

• Implement correct, performant and reliable code on schedule following the development standards and processes used by the team and wider organization, meeting the acceptance criteria of each story and task. 
• Investigate and fix defects – both internal and external – performing Route Cause Analysis as required. 
• Define and create automated tests at all levels of the application to ensure compatibility, stability, quality, and coverage. This includes all types of automated tests e.g. unit, component, integration, end-to-end etc. 
• Run the automated test suite, analyzing and triaging the test results. 
• Contribute to the creation of test automation frameworks, leveraging practices and techniques such as Behavioral Driven Development and Test-Driven Development. 
• Ensure implementation governance, including challenge and approval of development design, code review to verify compliance with design, architecture advisory, training and knowledge sharing. 
• Ensure that code created is of the required quality standards via established practices and processes such as code reviews, static analysis, and security scans. 
• Looks for ways to improve development and quality practices and processes to help the team deliver software more effectively and contribute to group and cross-group initiatives relating to these activities. 

• Deployment: 

• Provide support to implementation and operations teams to install/upgrade and maintain delivery environments. 
• Contribute to the design, development and maintenance of the CI/CD pipelines that support software delivery. 

• Research: 

• Research and keep up to date with technologies, practices, components, and tools used by the organization and suggest ideas for reuse within projects and tasks.
• Participate in research and proof of concept tasks – advises regarding the technical direction. 

• Agile Teamwork: 

• Significantly participates in all Agile meetings – planning, stand-up, retrospective, backlog refinement, review etc. 
• Proactively organize and facilitate discussions to clarify technical direction and solve challenges faced by the team. 
• Collaborate with teammates effectively to achieve the team's goals and objectives. 
• Provide constructive feedback as part of the established performance review process. 
• Support and coach more junior team members. 

Capabilities

Autonomy:

• Works under broad general direction. When receives specific direction, accepts guidance and has work reviewed at agreed milestones.
• Uses discretion in identifying and responding to complex issues and assignments.
• Determines when issues should be escalated to a higher level.
• Plans, schedules and monitors own work (and that of others where applicable) competently within limited deadlines.

Complexity:

• Performs a range of work, sometimes complex and nonroutine, in a variety of environments.
• Applies methodical approach to issue definition and resolution.

Influence:

• Interacts with and influences colleagues.
• Might have working level contact with customers, suppliers and partners.
• May supervise others or make decisions which impact the work assigned to individuals or phases of projects.
• Understands and collaborates on the analysis of user/customer needs and represents this in their work.

Knowledge:

• Has a sound generic, domain and specialist knowledge necessary to perform effectively in the organization typically gained from recognized bodies of knowledge and organizational information. Demonstrates effective application of that knowledge.
• Has an appreciation of the wider business context.
• Takes the initiative in identifying and negotiating appropriate personal development opportunities. Takes action to develop own knowledge.
• Proactively shares knowledge and experience easily.

Business skills:

• Appreciates how own role relates to other roles and to the business of the employer or client.
• Demonstrates an analytical and systematic approach to issue resolution.
• Understands how own role impacts security and demonstrates routine security practice and knowledge required for own work.
• Follows Experian Way, code of conduct, ethics and organizational standard.

Collaboration:

• Able to facilitate collaboration between stakeholders who have diverse objectives.
• Communicates fluently and can present complex information to both technical and non-technical audience.
• Demonstrates effective communication skills for effective dialogue with customers, suppliers and partners.

Leadership:

• Demonstrates technical leadership.

Programming/software development:

• Designs, codes, tests, corrects, and documents moderately complex programs and scripts from agreed specifications and subsequent iterations, using agreed standards and tools.
• Collaborates in reviews of specifications, with others as appropriate.
• Excellent programming skills relevant for the project team (excellent understanding of object-oriented design, data structures, algorithms and design patterns)

Testing:

• Reviews requirements and specifications and defines test conditions. Designs test cases and test scripts under own direction, mapping back to pre-determined criteria, recording and reporting outcomes. Analyses and reports test activities and results. Identifies and reports issues and risks associated with own work.

Systems integration:

• Defines the integration build and produces a build definition for generation of the software.
• Accepts software modules from software developers, and produces software builds for loading onto the target hardware from software source code.
• Configures the hardware environment, produces integration test specifications, conducts tests and records the details of any failures.
• Carries out and reports fault diagnosis relating to moderately complex problems.

Systems design:

• Specifies user/system interfaces and translates logical designs into physical designs taking account of target environment, performance & security requirements and existing systems.
• Produces detailed designs and documents all work using required standards, methods and tools, including prototyping tools where appropriate.

Data management:

• Applies ethical and robust techniques in the transformation of data from one format/medium to another, in line with organizational policies and procedures and being sensitive to risks around the use of information.