Period: Initially fixed term contract to 31 st March 2025 (or freelance contractor) Location: Remote or hybrid working Salary: £38-40k (or comparable contractor rates) Summary of role A rare opportunity to work in an exciting area of geospatial innovation and to build a green-field cloud deployment pipeline.
The role is initially advertised for a fixed term contract with the potential for future career development.
We are seeking an enthusiastic backend developer with a range of good interpersonal and transferable skills to enable technical delivery and programme management in a dynamic environment.
Strong database design and Python programming skills are essential, as well as experience of cloud engineering (AWS/Azure).
The successful candidate will develop scalable data infrastructure and software for commercial deployment of a tool that is currently being tested, requiring the candidate to work closely with a small research team and wider industry stakeholders.
Skills in Docker and container orchestration are desirable, as is experience of geospatial data.
Organisation profile footflow TM is a startup company that is being developed through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between the Oval Partnership and Loughborough University.
We are a group of professionals from a range of backgrounds (architecture, mobility planning, data science) with a passion for making great places through people-centric planning.
We successfully employ this approach to masterplanning projects and we have developed footflow as a tool to provide a valuable evidence-based contribution to the design and masterplanning of successful places.
Responsibilities Create and maintain data models for geospatial databases and develop pipelines to visualise the data.
Design and build a scalable, secure API for querying street-level data.
Implement containerization (Docker) and deploy the application on cloud infrastructure.
Create automated API and unit tests.
Collaborate with data science pipeline.
Set up load balancing and caching to optimize API performance.
Ensure scalability through proper orchestration and monitoring.
Assist with management of commercial relationships with all data suppliers.
Report to senior management and specify appropriate software technologies .
Ensure quality control and internal documentation of all programming activities.
Collaborate with colleagues working on a platform user interface and developing a streamlined consultancy offer for predictive footfall forecasting.
Person specification Requirements Hands-on experience of developing software architecture from inception to implementation.
Qualification in Computer Science or a relevant field.
Strong experience in building scalable APIs (ideally Python based).
Experience with containerization (Docker).
Experience with cloud platforms (AWS or Azure preferred) and scalable infrastructure design.
Familiarity with handling large data volumes and optimizing API performance.
Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines and automated testing.
Experience with databases, especially spatial databases like PostGIS.
Experience of version control systems (Git) Good communication skills with a high standard of spoken and written English Clear understanding of the ethical considerations of the work Desirable Knowledge about relevant machine learning algorithms (CART, Generalised Linear Regression) Experience in geospatial data analysis Strong commercial focus and understanding of the core public and private sector clients in the built environment sector