About you:

You’re a highly accomplished back-end web developer with a solid portfolio and extensive experience in leading others to create performant websites using efficient, robust code.

And you want to put your skills to good use – helping socially progressive organizations to communicate their knowledge and ideas online.

As the job title suggests, you have extensive knowledge of Drupal, advanced PHP, and MySQL. You are not expected to have knowledge or experience in all the other tools Soapbox uses, but any overlap you have is a bonus. The tools in question are:

• WordPress, as well  as Bolt CMS, CakePHP and microframeworks.
• Git, Bash, GNU Make, various command line tools,  and Apache/nginx servers, DDEV

Within your Drupal team and across the other teams, you will be leading on Drupal best practices and standards, and contributing to the wider Drupal Community.

You are happy reviewing others’ code as well as producing your own, but you’re not afraid to share thorny issues with colleagues in order to work out an optimal solution together.

Ideally, you’ll have led a team of at least two or three other developers, and you are comfortable mentoring and providing training to less experienced colleagues.

You stay on top of new trends and innovations in web development and find ways to apply them to your own work.

You will have the confidence and communication skills to engage directly with clients and to explain your proposed solutions to them.

It would also be great if you had some experience working for non-profit clients.

You must have fluent written and spoken English.

About the job:

The main focus of the job is providing agency leadership in this key area of web development, ensuring all the work done meets up-to-date best practices and the company's own high standards and protocols, and that all relevant documentation is maintained.

A key part of the role is the managing of one of three specialist in-house development teams (the other two focus on the front end and on WordPress) overseen by the director of web development. The three teams work very closely together; while you would manage those within your team, you would also ensure the other teams follow the company's best practices when related to your expertise.

The Drupal team mainly develops the back end of new websites and other digital products.  Most of the projects involve the delivery of an organization’s main website, but smaller sites and other products are built, including Soapbox's flagship online Reader. You can see many examples of past work on the company website.

At full strength the Drupal team should have at least two other developers (currently also recruiting for one of these roles). Soapbox has also established relationships with a number of senior back-end developers from a white label Drupal agency, and you will responsible for light-touch supervision these developers’ work on a selection of projects.

As well as reviewing others’ work, you will  be doing your own development – generally focusing on one major project at any time, seeing it through from inception to completion. And as a technical lead, you will be given time to  research and monitor positive developments within the Drupal community, and work out ways to implement these within the team.

You will also collaborate closely with other colleagues across the agency – including project managers, digital designers and content strategists – helping to plan projects, balance workloads and ensure that the company always meets development budgets and deadlines.

Soapbox has two UK offices – in London and in Bath – and the company's strong preference is for this role to be based in London. Exceptional applicants who want to work from Bath will be considered– or even fully remotely – but only if you are prepared to come to London on  a regular basis.

What is offered:

• 25 days paid annual holiday, plus a three-day Christmas closure and public holidays. You’ll get your birthday off, too. 
• Cycle-to-work scheme, tech loans and season ticket loans. 
• Flexible working options – dependent on the role and the arrangements already in place for other team members.  
• Generous parental leave and other family-friendly policies.
• A calendar of regular social events.
• Matched pension contributions
• Barista-quality coffee, snacks and fresh fruit.

About the company:

Soapbox is a creative studio for ideas that matter. Soapbox partners with forward-thinking organisations to turn knowledge and evidence into social progress. The team consists of designers, web developers, writers, thinkers, storytellers and problem-solvers and is passionate about the power of ideas and evidence to build a better world. 

Soapbox has studios in London, Bath, Washington DC and will shortly open a studio in Berlin. 
 
Soapbox is a flexible and fair employer and the company values runs through everything, from the clients to the way staff is treated. This has helped Soapbox build a close-knit, hard-working and ambitious team. Many of Soapbox  colleagues have worked with the company for a large part of their career, advancing professionally over their years with the company. And Soapbox's growing roster of clients include many of the world’s leading charities, NGOs and research organisations.

The team is working from home at present, but when employees return to the office, all of the developers will have the option of  hybrid working (coming in at least two days a week, with rest spent at home) and the company is also willing to consider requests for other forms  of flexible working, such as reduced or compressed hours (Normal working week is 37.5 hours split equally over five days).

Soapbox is committed to equality of opportunity and knows that including employees with a diverse range of perspectives and experiences will improve the quality and creativity of the services provided. Soapbox particularly welcomes applications from candidates who are members of groups that are currently under-represented at Soapbox, including LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, and people from minority ethnic and religious communities.