Platform Engineer (Developer Experience)

Rightmove; London; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job description

Role: Platform Engineer (Developer Experience)

Location: London / Hybrid

Reporting to: Platform Engineering Manager

This role represents a unique opportunity for a mid-level engineer with a strong Java foundation to expand their expertise into Platform Engineering and join a team prioritising automation, observability, and delivering value in iterations, while directly shaping developer productivity through self-service tooling and standardised workflows.

The initial focus of the role is to maintain existing Java services, owned by the Developer Experience team. The team is currently working on migrating services to the Cloud. The role will then shift to enhance our Internal Developer Platform solution, to abstract the infrastructure complexities for developers, enabling developers to build and deliver microservices efficiently.

Success in this role requires balancing hands-on Java service maintenance with platform architecture, CI/CD pipeline design, and developer enablement.

A typical week as a Platform Engineer in the Developer Experience team might involve:

• Maintaining Java services owned by the Developer Experience team.
• Working with developers, providing support.
• Delivering training workshops to our internal customers, when necessary, and improving documentation.
• Working on platform tasks and learning more about the technologies we use.
• Expanding self-service capabilities in the internal platform to cover common use cases.

Core Responsibilities

• Platform Development:
  - Enhance IDP Platform
  - Create Gitlab CI templates
  - Standardise configuration and monitoring
• Developer Support: Participate in the rota to provide support to developers for platform-related issues in areas that Developer Experience owns. We do a weekly review and brainstorm ways of reducing the number of requests through automation and building auditable self-service tooling, documentation, and training.
• Operational Excellence: Participate in the out-of-hours on-call rota (1 week/month - competitive additional compensation offered).

Required Skills

• Experience with modern Java: to write clean, efficient, and well-documented code.
• Experience with test frameworks: JUnit and Mockito is essential.
• Debugging skills: to be able to identify and resolve issues in complex systems.
• Gradle Fundamentals: to write and maintain complex Gradle build files.
• Dependency Management: to understand different dependency configurations and resolving conflicts.
• Multi-Project Builds: to be able to set up and manage multi-project builds in Gradle.
• Performance Optimization: a good understanding of Gradle builds speed optimisations and efficiency is a big plus.
• Springboot knowledge for the purpose of library upgrades.
• Custom Gradle plugin: to be able to create custom Gradle tasks to automate build processes, retrieve properties, code generation, or other development tasks.
• Security: Experience working within an SDLC framework (ISO 27002:2022), understanding of SALSA and SBOMs.

We're looking for someone who:

• Always pushes for continuous improvement and has strong attention to detail.
• Has a positive outlook, good people, and communication skills.
• Has an automation mindset.

Relevant Technology we use:

• Google Cloud Platform
• Google Kubernetes Engine with Anthos Service Mesh
• Confluent Cloud
• Incident.io
• Gitlab
• Jira, Confluence, Slack, Teams
• Elastic APM, Kibana
• Java, Node, Python, Javascript, Go, React

About Rightmove

Our vision is to give everyone the belief they can make their move. We aim to make moving simpler, by giving everyone the best place to turn to and return to for access to the tools, expertise, trust, and belief to make it happen.

We're home to the UK's largest choice of properties, and are the go-to destination for millions of people planning their next move, reading the latest industry news, or just browsing what's on the market.

Despite this growth, we've remained a friendly, supportive place to work, with employee #1 still working here! We've done this by placing the Rightmove Hows at the heart of everything we do. These are the essential values that reflect our culture, and include:

• Be approachable and appreciate what others do
• Make complex things as simple as possible
• Build great teams, because Rightmove is people
• Drive improvement, we can always be better
• Share early, honestly, and often

We believe in careers that open doors, and help our team develop by providing an open and inclusive work environment, offering ongoing training opportunities, and supporting charity fundraising events. And with 88% of Rightmovers saying we're a great place to work, we're clearly doing something right!

If all this has caught your eye, you may well be a Rightmover in the making...

What we offer

• Cash plan for dental, optical, and physio treatments
• Private Medical Insurance, Pension, and Life Insurance, Employee Assistance Plan
• 27 days holiday plus two (paid) volunteering days a year to give back, and holiday buy schemes
• Hybrid working pattern with 2 days in office
• Contributory stakeholder pension
• Life assurance at 4x your basic salary to a spouse, family member, or other nominated person in your life
• Competitive compensation package
• Paid leave for maternity, paternity, adoption & fertility
• Travel Loans, Bike to Work scheme, Rental Deposit Loan
• Charitable contributions through Payroll Giving and donation matching
• Access deals and discounts on things like travel, electronics, fashion, gym memberships, cinema discounts, and more

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Rightmove will never discriminate on the basis of age, disability, sex, race, religion or belief, gender reassignment, marriage/civil partnership, pregnancy/maternity, or sexual orientation. At Rightmove, we believe that a diverse and inclusive workforce leads to better innovation, productivity, and overall success. We are committed to creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for all employees, regardless of their background or identity, to develop and promote a diverse culture that reflects the communities we serve.

Ultimately, we care much more about the person you are and how you think and approach things than a list of qualifications and buzzwords on a CV. Even if you can't say 'yes' to all the above, but are smart, self-motivated, and passionate, then get in touch.