UCL ADVANCES
Job Description & Person Specification:
Software Engineer - Platforms
1. Background Information
UCL – a university, a community, a world-class reputation …
UCL is one of the UK’s leading universities, a world-class multidisciplinary research and teaching
institution, whose staff and former students have included 26 Nobel Prize winners. Founded in
1826, UCL was the first university in England to admit students regardless of race, religion or
gender. It continues to thrive on the creativity and diversity of its community which today
comprises 10,000 staff, 13,000 undergraduates and 9,000 graduate students from 130 countries
across the globe.
Constitutionally part of the federal University of London, UCL is in practice an independent
university, with an annual turnover of over £800 million. Its 70 departments span arts and
humanities, social and historical sciences, law, architecture and the built environment,
engineering sciences, mathematical and physical sciences, life and clinical sciences, and
medicine. UCL includes academic units as diverse as the UCL Slade School of Fine Art, the UCL
Bartlett School of Architecture and the UCL Institute of Child Health, which is associated with
Great Ormond Street Hospital.
75% of UCL’s departments received ratings of ‘excellent’ in national teaching quality reviews
carried out between 1993 and 2001 and 60 departments achieved top (grade 5 and 5*) ratings in
the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise. As a result of its track record, UCL receives substantial
funding from government and charities, and more than £250 million is currently being invested in
state-of-the-art facilities for cutting-edge research and teaching. Situated at the heart of one of
the world’s greatest cities, UCL’s historic central campus in Bloomsbury is within easy reach of
several rail and underground stations, the Eurostar terminal and Heathrow airport.
UCL Advances
UCL Advances, UCL’s center for entrepreneurship and business interaction, helps anyone who
wants to learn about, start or grow a business. Its primary role is to promote a culture of
entrepreneurship on campus and engagement with entrepreneurs and small businesses beyond
UCL’s boundaries. It works to support start-ups and small businesses across London by helping
them to access the technical and business expertise of UCL’s staff and students through a series
of programmes to help support ambitious young companies.
UCL Advances is affiliated with UCL Enterprise, which provides UCL’s structures for engaging
with business for commercial and societal benefit.
www.ucl.ac.uk/advances
www.ucl.ac.uk/enterprise
Programme Summary
DECIDE helps London's entrepreneurs test, iterate and launch ideas. Part of Advances, UCL’s
Centre for Entrepreneurship, we work with startups and leading companies to transform and
validate ideas through early stage product development and pre-commercial testing. We offer 3
core services; UX Lab, a user experience evaluation and design service, Device Lab, London’s
largest open device library, and App Lab, a private app store for in-the-wild user testing on UCL’s
community of 35,000 people.
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DECIDE is a diverse and ambitious programme, with App Lab currently being one of the most
interesting open innovation projects in the country, making this a unique opportunity. You will be
joining a dynamic, highly motivated, fun and entrepreneurial team.
2. The Role
Job Title
Reporting to
Location
Software Engineer - Platforms
Technical Services co-ordinator
IDEALondon, 69 Wilson Street, LONDON, EC2A 2BB
Job Function:
This role will be involved in the development, deployment, maintenance and testing components
of the DECIDE programme, primarily “App Lab”, a private App Store that will provide a large
scale testing environment to support start-up and other companies with private trialling of their
applications. The role will also include helping design, prototype and run mobile app deployment,
as well as helping develop the best practice policy and guideline documents for development,
testing and deployment.
2.1 Principal Responsibilities
• Liaise and coordinate activity with the Technical Co-ordinator to maintain consistency and
effective delivery of services across multiple platforms.
• Help design, build and iterate web and/or mobile based platforms to deliver App-Lab
• Assist in the design, development, and maintenance of websites and software systems
• Support the development and maintenance of systems necessary for service delivery,
including Device Lab
• To assist with cataloguing and preparation of mobile devices for testing and events
• Help support the application process for those wishing to access DECIDE services and
help prioritise projects appropriately based on mobile / platform suitability.
• To ensure that the confidentiality of records and stored personal data is respected and
maintained for all projects within the programme in line with the Data Protection Act.
• Develop and maintain a full and up to date knowledge of relevant industry standards,
trends, and best practice; and their applications and benefits.
2.2 Other Duties
•
Represent the programme internally and externally and deputise for the DECIDE
Technical Services co-ordinator where appropriate.
•
Provide technical advice to clients on system design and best practice
•
Develop and maintain a full and up to date knowledge of all Enterprise services /
partnerships and their application and benefits.
•
Liaison with other departments within the College and partner organisations to develop
better services and to establish the programmes’ work within the context of their initiatives
eg. Computer Science, to ensure best practice in incorporated into the service design
•
Participation in activities with external partners to forward the aims of UCL DECIDE
•
To work with programme team on analysis of data and subsequent report writing,
publication and dissemination of project results.
•
Help conduct and analyse testing sessions with clients, both on UCL campus and “in the
wild” at appropriate locations.
•
To help organise and host events (for example, workshops or meetings) to share results.
•
Carry out any other duties as are within the scope, spirit and purpose of the job as
requested by the line manager or Head of Department/Division.
•
Actively follow UCL policies including Equal Opportunities policies and be expected to
give consideration within their role as to how they can actively advance equality of
opportunity and good relations between people who share a relevant protected
characteristic and people who do not share it.
•
Maintain an awareness and observation of Fire and Health & Safety Regulations.
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This job description reflects the present requirements of the post, and as duties and
responsibilities change/develop, the job description will be reviewed and be subject to
amendment in consultation with the post holder.
3. Person Specification: Knowledge, Skills and Attitude Required
Person Specification
You must be a skilful, hard working and innovative engineer, with highly developed technical
skills and able to effective communicate with and work within a team. Good at problem solving,
and analytical thinking. You must be able to demonstrate excellent organisational and
interpersonal skills, the ability to take on responsibility and exercise skills in time management.
Specifically you need to be able to demonstrate the following experience and competencies, or
their equivalents in other fields:
Essential
• Strong interest in digital SME’s and the startup culture in London
• Readiness to engage in continuous professional development activities to keep
knowledge base and skills up to date and to develop them further.
• Innovative approach, ideally learned in a fast moving corporate environment.
• Relevant and deep technical expertise and industry sector knowledge in the areas of
specialty
• Proven prior experience of Agile and Scrum methodologies and software project
management
• Experience using REST & JSON web service and using Model View Controller Web
Architectures
• Experience working with databases, for example MySQL
• Ability work on own initiative, with minimal supervision and calmly under pressure to
prioritise a busy workload according to deadlines
• Ability to successfully manage a variety of tasks to deadline and to work calmly under
pressure.
• Tact and discretion in the handling of highly confidential and sensitive information.
• A high level of accuracy and consistent attention to detail
• Good interpersonal and communication skills both written and oral, and be able to develop
effective working relationships.
• Understanding of the issues and processes relevant to a commercial research
environment
• Interest in attending developer meet ups and events
• Applicants must have a minimum of 3 A level passes or equivalent
Desirable
• A high level of specialised scientific, engineering, or computing knowledge generally
acquired by postgraduate academic study (eg. MSc, PhD) and/or professional commercial
experience
• First hand experience in start-up and SME product development cycles
• Background in software product development for commercial applications
• Experience of working with digital enterprises
• Relevant technical expertise in the cross platform mobile frameworks
• Experience with J2EE and Spring Framework technologies
• Experience with testing frameworks, such as JUnit
• Familiarity with cloud environments, such as Amazon AWS
• Experience using web development frameworks and libraries such as, jQuery, HTML5
Grunt, Bootstrap and others
• Experience developing mobile applications for both iOS and Android
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