News UK

Role: Mid-Level Software/DevOps Engineer

Location: London Bridge

Contract: Permanent

We are News UK: a company full of talented, dedicated and creative people. We are an ambitious and ever-growing organisation with a passion for storytelling, capturing moments, meaning and magic to make sense of the world. Our newspapers reach more than 30 million people each week and include The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times. News UK is also home to News UK Broadcasting, a leading UK and Irish media company boasting independent local and national radio stations including talkSPORT, VirginRadio, talkTV, talkRADIO and Times Radio.

Your Team

Video & Publishing: You will be joining the team responsible for building the necessary underlying capabilities that will help power our digital, video, audio & print products well into the future. We work closely with our peers in all parts of the organisation to build world class products and services that our customers love.

Major focus areas include:

• Video: Continuing the Mimir rollout and addressing an extensive list of feature requests.
• Print: Tackling a significant challenge—simplifying our print publishing processes and technology by leveraging new automation tools.

Your Role

We’re looking for a passionate Mid-Level Software/DevOps Engineer to join our team with the prospect of leading the development, management, and optimisation of our Planning and Operations tech ecosystem.

You will play a critical role in ensuring all data we plan, create, publish, archive, and store within our various systems is optimised for our publishing channels. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams across Technology, Operations, Editorial, and third-party vendors to implement best practices in print publishing, streamline workflows, deliver efficiencies and enhance our publishing strategy.

With technical excellence and domain knowledge you will ensure a reliable service is delivered to stakeholders, through proactive system maintenance and effective incident response, optimisation and continuous product improvement.

Your understanding of the product landscape, business, and systems domains will be instrumental in defining future publishing strategies and exploring emerging technologies and standards. You will leverage this expertise to identify opportunities for improving our products and services, driving efficiency and profitability.

You will have technical skills across:

• Linux servers, Windows servers and clients;
• Mac and virtualised endpoints;
• scripting such as Bash, PowerShell, HTML, CSS, XML, XSLT, Javascript, Python, PHP, Groovyscripts, version control (or a propensity to learn some of these);
• deployment processes including Git and Ansible,
• CI/CD tools such as CircleCi (or GitHub Action as an acceptable alternative); and
• DB tools across MySQL/MariaDB along with SQL queries and procedures.

The role will include utilisation of AWS Cloud technologies and infrastructure, including monitoring tools such as AWS CloudWatch, New Relic and Zabbix. It will encompass AWS services and technologies particularly related to hosting and scaling applications, such as EC2, S3, Lambda, and IAM, and knowledge of concepts around authentication, security, infrastructure provisioning using Terraform and AWS CloudFormation, containerisation, VPC, security groups, load balancers, and other networking concepts within AWS would be advantageous.

Your Responsibilities

Planning and Operations:

• Oversee the integration and processing of planning and publishing data between the various systems in the ecosystem.
• Implementation of best practices for planning and publishing, guiding and advising the user community as required.

Systems Maintenance and Optimisation:

• Develop, Configure and/or maintain various systems, in-house integrations and applications within the print ecosystem to facilitate the publishing workflow (inc. new features and workflows, as required).
• Deployment of configuration and software changes to all environments (inc. documentation of releases for users and technical resources).
• Perform capacity planning, and work with the infrastructure and cloud teams to ensure we have optimal and cost effective hosting for self-hosted applications in the ecosystem.

Support and Troubleshooting:

• Vendor collaboration and management, including liaising around system upgrades, updates, patches, feature requests, and troubleshooting. Track spending with the vendor, and commission well-specified development requests and track progress through to delivery and implementation.
• Manage incidents, problems and change management and respond to MIR actions, and ensure incidents, service requests and problems are dealt with in a timely and robust manner and with an effective solution and appropriate communications. During incidents provide definitive recommendations and action plans to rapidly recover/restore service.

Collaboration with Cross-Functional Teams and system vendors:

• Participate in ceremonies and drive development and testing through a prioritised backlog containing specified initiatives, defects and feature requests.
• Work closely with Technology, Operations, and Editorial teams to align content strategies and workflows.
• Gather requirements from stakeholders and translate them into system enhancements or new features.

Print Publishing Strategy Development:

• Support of key stakeholders through regular meetings and discussions regarding problems and new feature requests. Communicate roadmap items, content of patches and hotfixes, and new configuration changes.
• Maintain a roadmap for product development with input from vendor and stakeholders, ensuring News UK requirements and interests are covered and fully represented
• Propose and implement improvements to processes, tools, and systems to enhance overall efficiency and effectiveness (inc. evaluation of new tools or technologies that could enhance the print publishing process).

If you believe you have the skills and passion to succeed, even if you don’t meet every requirement on the list, we encourage you to apply. We value potential just as much as experience and are eager to hear from individuals who are enthusiastic about learning and growing with us.

At News UK, we know the value of working together, which is why we operate a hybrid working policy with a minimum of three days a week in the office. Being in the office allows us to collaborate, innovate, and thrive as a team in our vibrant and dynamic workspace. Some roles may require more office-based days depending on the nature of the position, so we encourage you to speak with your recruiter to learn more about what’s required for your role.

We are News UK: One of the leading media businesses in the UK and Ireland. Our newsbrands include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Sun on Sunday and The TLS. Our national broadcast brands include talkSPORT, Times Radio, Talk and Virgin Radio UK, and we have market-leading local radio stations across Ireland. Our world-famous brands provide news, analysis, opinion and entertainment to almost 40 million people each month. Spanning print and pixel, audio and video, events and experiences, our multiplatform brands are home to a plurality of opinion, representing the diverse communities we serve. News UK is wholly owned by News Corp.

Life at News

Driven by passion, guided by principles and acting with purpose. We represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter. We inform our audiences so that they can make decisions based on trusted information.

To do this, we believe our employees must represent different backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. We strive to maximise and encourage every individual’s potential and ensure everyone feels valued. We support this through our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategy, which focuses on three main priorities - attracting talent from a wider, more representative pool, developing equity programmes to drive better representation in our leadership, and ensuring diversity and inclusivity in our workforce as well as the journalism and content we produce. We also currently have 12 employee led networks and groups that support our strategy and connect like minded employees socially.

Benefits

Some of our benefits include:

• Maternity leave up to 18 weeks full basic salary & paternity leave up to 2 weeks
• Wide range of training available, plus full LinkedIn Learning access
• Private medical insurance including coverage for pre-existing conditions
• Discounted gym memberships, free ClassPass at Home, weekly virtual yoga classes
• ‘Bikes for Work’ and ‘Electric Car’ scheme
• Up to 60% discount on Harper Collins books
• Access to exclusive events and competitions with exciting brands such as talkSPORT, Virgin Radio UK & The Times. Weekly virtual panel chats with top journalists and celebrities
• Access to wellbeing benefits such as EAP, physio/massage and counselling
• A generous pension scheme with employer contributions of up to 5%
• 25 days holiday, plus bank holidays and up to 4 volunteering days per year

We want to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to perform to their best when applying for a role. If you would like to receive any information in a different way or for us to do anything differently to support you apply for any of our roles please contact us on careers@news.co.uk.

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