| | As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem solving skills and dedication to build stronger minds and a healthier world.
UW faculty and staff also enjoy outstanding benefits, professional growth opportunities and unique resources in an environment noted for diversity, intellectual excitement, artistic pursuits and natural beauty. All of which has allowed the UW to be nationally recognized as a “Great College to Work For” for six consecutive years.
Office of Research Information Services (ORIS), a division of the Office of Research, coordinates, develops, and supports electronic research administration for faculty and staff at the University of Washington. Goals include:
•Improve service to Principal Investigators (PIs) and research and administrative staff, enhance their ability to obtain funding, reduce their workload, and streamline the processing of their proposals.
•Provide authorized individuals with convenient access to timely information on the status of proposals and awards.
•Increase the efficiency of the research community to meet growing workload and compliance demands with limited resources.
•Maintain the University of Washington's position as a leading public research University.
The University of Washington’s Office of Research Information Services has an outstanding opportunity for a full time Front-End Engineer.
The Front-End Engineer will develop and support accessible, responsive, and intuitive user interfaces for researchers and central units that streamline their administrative processes and make UW a great place to do research. In addition, the engineer will develop, support, and administer a variety of software services that enable the research enterprise.
Technical scope requires deep systems knowledge and an ability to quickly learn and understand the policies, functional processes, and procedures of the University. Software complexity ranges from websites and web applications to operating system internals to distributed services. The scope of tasks performed include design, development, programming, implementation and support of a suite of software.
This position engages with Product Managers, UX designers, and technical staff within ORIS and the broader UW to identify solutions that meet institutional business & technical requirements to provide necessary information for successful submission of research proposals and tools to aid the management of their research projects. The Front-End Engineer is expected to advocate for best-practices in the front-end design and development.
Responsibilities:
Front-End Engineering
•Collaboratively develop and test user interface elements, interactions and layouts designed with our User Experience (UX) team for usability, cross-browser and platform interoperability
•Develop and test front-end UI code and API integrations, ensuring sustainability of code
•Work closely with other software engineers to ensure front-end architecture integrates with other system architecture layers
•Collaborate with developer(s) on optimization of code maintainability and ensure client-side performance
•Employ a user-centered design approach, working with business and user experience analysts, technical writers, SMEs, and end users
•Collaborate with our UX team to develop, document, and communicate a design pattern library to ensure consistency and clarity across multiple products and platforms
•Work with the Front-End Architect to develop, document, and communicate a consistent front-end architecture for multiple products in conjunction with our development, user experience, & quality assurance teams
•Work with UX designers and content strategists to configure, implement and maintain analytics solutions on multiple products.
•Apply best practices in web standards as they relate to universal web design
•Work closely with other software engineers to ensure front-end architecture integrates with other system architecture layer
Analysis and Requirements Gathering
•Work with the entire architecture team and contribute to the full-stack of issues such as security, resiliency and present your plans and design for peer review
•Deep collaboration with our User Experience team, representing engineering to help refine the design vision and make it actionable
•Work closely with product owners, content owners, technical staff, and business analysts to identify requirements and constraints
•Collect requirements based on metrics data including usage analytics, code profiling statistics, content data growth patterns, issue and other data-driven sources
•Plan, execute, evaluate, and release prototypes and final products to end users and other stakeholders for review and acceptance
Production Support
•Review, triage, and respond to incoming requests as coverage is needed
Required:
•Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Informatics, HCDE, Visual Communications, or related field
•Minimum 3 years' experience in software to include a minimum of 2 years front- end development
•In-depth knowledge of Angular (preferred) and/or React and associated technologies including, but not limited to, TypeScript, RxJS, and Redux
•Broad knowledge of front-end web technologies such as CSS3, HTML5, HTTP (1 and 2)
•Knowledge of modern JavaScript along with experience developing interfaces that adhere to both Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and established and emerging usability standards
•Knowledge of highly performant client-side and server-side engineering, browser internals, RESTFul API architecture, and loosely-coupled systems, and how to integrate and simplify complex interaction design techniques into this environment
•Familiarity with automated unit and e2e testing, analytics services such as Google Analytics and/or Segment, and build automation using Azure DevOps and/or Bitbucket Pipelines
•Front-end performance profiling and code-tuning
•Knowledge of source control and build systems
•Ability to work collaboratively with technical and non-technical staff to determine and confirm requirements and appropriate solutions
•Proficient in a variety of methods to convey complex ideas and concepts (e.g. wireframes, prototypes, etc.) to technical and non-technical audiences
•Demonstrated excellent written/oral communication skills, technical documentation skills, user liaison skills, and personal interaction abilities
•Pragmatic problem-solver with the ability to focus on meeting short term goals while not losing sight of the big picture
•Strong online portfolio available for viewing
Equivalent education and/or experience may substitute for minimum requirements.
Desired:
•Experience working in higher education research administration or similar administrative enterprise information technology service sectors
•Knowledge of lean/agile software development practices including Scrum and Kanban
•Experience with application logging and monitoring using Splunk
•Experience developing in virtual environments using Puppet, Vagrant and similar tools
•Any level of familiarity with DevOps principles and practices used to advance CI/CD initiatives
•Any level of familiarity with Node.js, C#, Java, .NET, PHP, Python
•Any level of familiarity with SQL and NoSQL databases
CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT:
This position contributes in a collaborative team work environment. Collaboration among Project Managers, Business Analysts, Software Developers, UX team, CX team and business partners is supported through a shared space working environment, ad hoc meetings focused on problem-solving, and the use of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools. Inflexible deadlines and non-standard working hours are at times required.
Application Process:
The application process for UW positions may include completion of a variety of online assessments to obtain additional information that will be used in the evaluation process. These assessments may include Work Authorization, Cover Letter and/or others. Any assessments that you need to complete will appear on your screen as soon as you select “Apply to this position”. Once you begin an assessment, it must be completed at that time; if you do not complete the assessment you will be prompted to do so the next time you access your “My Jobs” page. If you select to take it later, it will appear on your "My Jobs" page to take when you are ready. Please note that your application will not be reviewed, and you will not be considered for this position until all required assessments have been completed. |
