ustwo is looking for an experienced Tech Principal to support the delivery of our projects. This role can vary in the amount of hands-on development needed, but will involve hands-on technical design and technical leadership of full-stack teams, with support extending to mobile teams, depending on the project.
As a Tech Principal at ustwo you will work in partnership with our Tech Director and other senior technical leaders to design and develop solutions that balance the needs of the clients with the evolution of the technical landscape. You will be required to be hands-on, producing both detailed technical work and high-level architectural designs and be a pragmatic visionary who can translate business needs into workable technology solutions, as well as contributing in shaping our engineering practice.
As a Principal, you will be one of the primary ustwo voices and interface points with clients, and we will look to you to create deep, effective partnerships with our clients and to define and deliver work that creates lasting value. Effective client communication, client management and presentation skills are a core requirement to be effective in this role. Within ustwo, as someone skilled at managing others you are comfortable adapting your approach to the needs of each team member without compromising on deep care, achieving positive results, and exhibiting an inclusive and inspirational leadership style essential to maintaining a unique and diverse culture.
ustwo works very hard to win interesting and challenging projects, and you will have a leading role on projects that make a meaningful impact to our clients, their customers, and the world. We work across the project lifecycle, from highly strategic discovery work to launching large-scale build projects and everything in between.
We are open to all types of development backgrounds - whether your experience leans more heavily towards the frontend or the backend is not as important as your overall software expertise, the breadth and depth of your experience working on complex systems, and your ability to collaborate effectively both with your ustwo colleagues and with clients. What is a requirement is that you must have a solid grounding in solution architecture, including cloud-based, on-prem and hybrid solutions, as well as expert-level working knowledge of software development fundamentals including software design patterns, API design, and the SDLC and all of its ceremonies and artefacts.
Location
Our Portuguese team is dotted all around the region as this is currently a fully remote studio. However, a successful candidate would be based in Portugal.
How you'll spend your time
- You'll work across the full breadth of our product and service portfolio; spanning from strategic discovery to full product delivery projects; pushing the boundaries and raising the bar within our technology team and all of ustwo. You'll design and deliver engaging workshops and technical solutions for our teams and clients.
- You'll work with a full cross-discipline team of delivery coaches, design/product leads and other tech leaders to ensure we're building high-quality products as well as delivering projects on time and on budget.
- You'll flex between working across a few projects to being immersed on one project, prioritising your time effectively. Your time on projects will be spent designing and influencing technical architecture, guiding the team in technical implementation, and working with stakeholders. You will typically be the most senior technologist on a project, and will act as a point of escalation and decision-making for the team, as well as being the face of ustwo to the client and their senior stakeholders, both technical and non-technical. The amount of hands-on development you do is flexible, balancing projects and ustwo priorities.
- You'll spend part of your time line managing other engineers - inspiring our technologists to uncover opportunities for them to develop their careers and use the freedom to grow within ustwo, through great role modelling, thoughtful and balanced feedback and strong management skills.
- You'll lead community initiatives within tech, nurturing a thriving, self-driving community as well as being a key external voice for ustwo where applicable. This passion for technology motivates those who work with you to enjoy the journey.
- You'll be an active contributor to business development; helping identify and convert new opportunities and represent the company in pitches. You'll be comfortable working with varying degrees of ambiguity, and relish the idea of solving problems. You'll happily turn your hand to the highest value piece of work ahead of you, regardless of whose "lane" it's in.
- You'll be a deputy for our Tech Director and be a human voice for your community, representing all perspectives in your decision-making.
What we're looking for
- You have extensive professional development experience in building highly scalable and resilient web and/or mobile applications (typically 10+ years), with at least the last few of those years as a lead/principal developer or architect.
- You have the ability to lead on frontend, backend and infrastructure design and development, and can speak credibly to the full range of technology we work with (including mobile).
- You're confident in communicating architectural and technical design to client stakeholders, and collaboratively agreeing upon the best approach for the work at hand.
- You have experience with deploying, hosting, securing, monitoring and scaling in the cloud, with experience working in at least one of the major cloud platforms (e.g. AWS, GCP, Azure).
- You have database and data modelling experience, and a solid understanding of the appropriate use cases for SQL / NoSQL datastores.
- You have experience with Devops, setting up and working with CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform, Puppet, etc.)
- You have experience with automated testing techniques and tools, and advocate for testing as a core part of our discipline.
- You have experience with API integration / testing / design / implementation, as well as understanding of other common enterprise integration techniques/patterns.
- You understand software and architecture design patterns, how to best apply them, and are up to date on the latest front-end and back-end development frameworks.
- You have experience in nurturing and growing an engineering team by setting goals, coaching, providing feedback, and having the occasional difficult conversation.
- You have experience working within and leading development teams in agile environments such as Scrum / Kanban, and embody agile principles in your ways of working.
What you're like
- You are a hands on, caring, resilient, patient, results-oriented, and humble person - you get things done.
- You foster community and are interested in bringing people together and making your team a great place to work.
- You're human, and recognise humanity in others. This means both learning together and being able to speak to others, regardless of level/position, and empathise with their concerns
- You want to make great products that affect real people's lives, at scale.
- You have a strong appetite to explore new technologies and share knowledge.
- You welcome feedback and look to improve project development and understanding.
- You are a clear and confident communicator, both written and verbally. You communicate effectively across all levels of seniority and technical knowledge.
- You are a team player and are able to work to deadlines and in a fast-paced environment.
Lisbon Tech Principal salary band: €65,000 - €90,000 depending on experience
Interested but think your experience doesn't perfectly align with this job description? That's ok. Research shows underrepresented groups in particular are less inclined to apply for jobs where they don't meet 100% of the requirements listed. We'd still love to hear from you if you feel passionate about this role! We are committed to creating an inclusive environment for our colleagues, clients, community, and the users of our products. We don't have all the answers but we're on a journey, and we are learning together.
About Ustwo
ustwo combines expertise in product and service development, ventures and gaming to make a meaningful impact on the challenges companies and individuals face in contemporary culture.
Over the years, we have been carving out a reputation in the space between digital product development and new experience design.
Our deep product development knowledge, our design heritage and our leadership at the edges of technology and culture, means we are capable of providing fresh creative and strategic direction on genuinely new experiences, as well as deep technical expertise on implementation - never disconnecting strategy from implementation.
This combination of capabilities is rare and valuable, particularly in a market that's seeing ever-increasing convergence of entertainment, gaming, content, commerce, and platforms.
