Mid Level Software Engineer

Spotlight Sports Group is a global media and technology company specialising in content and data within sports betting, horse racing and fantasy sports. With over 400 employees, the group operates multiple award-winning brands, including Racing Post, the world's largest horse racing affiliate, Pickswise, myracing and Free Super Tips. We partner with leading operators across the betting industry to produce and build multilingual, best-in-class digital products and content to engage and educate customers. ICS-digital, an international marketing agency including ICS-translate, also operates under the group.

Job Purpose:

We are seeking a mid-level engineer to join our small Affiliate development team. The role will be responsible for supporting the development, testing, and deployment of both front end components and applications, as well as back end services, to support our multiple branded affiliate sites. We are looking for someone who is both comfortable writing code as well as interfacing with stakeholders and the wider business to ensure that our products and projects are fully aligned with the company goals. The successful candidate will be working closely with the Senior Engineer on a day to day basis, but must be someone who can work independently and take full responsibility and ownership of the code they commit.

Essential Requirements:

• Experience working on large scale website projects
• Experience in analysing user requirements to inform application design
• Excellent understanding of good software engineering practices
• Good understanding of software quality assurance principles
• Version control with Git and workflows with GitHub/GitLab
• Dockerizing WordPress and Next.js for local and production environments
• Familiarity with agile methodologies, Jira, Notion, or similar project tracking tools

Next.js

• Deep understanding of Next.js routing and server-side rendering (SSR)
• Experience with data fetching methods: getStaticProps, getServerSideProps, and getInitialProps
• Comfortable using TypeScript in a Next.js environment
• Strong grasp of component-based architecture (React)
• Familiarity with state management tools (e.g. Redux, React Context)
• Good understanding of frontend performance: lazy loading, image optimisation, Lighthouse best practices

Wordpress

• Strong experience with WordPress as a headless CMS, especially using WP REST AP
• Proficient in PHP, especially for customising themes, plugins, and ACF (Advanced Custom Fields)
• Experience building or consuming custom post types, taxonomies, and meta queries
• Comfortable with WordPress security, user roles, and performance optimisation

Desirable

• Past experience implementing a login/subscription service
• Familiarity with monorepos
• Experience with monitoring and logging using tools like Sentry or Datadog
• Experience working with design systems
• Devops knowledge, CI/CD, AWS
• Experience working with Docker Containers
• Experience using generative AI frameworks such as OpenAI models and APIs or any AI Software development tooling

Personal skills

• Solid written and verbal communication skills; able to clearly articulate concepts and requirements that are understood by technical and non-technical teams, as well as document technical approaches
• Highly self-motivated with a passion to succeed as an individual and as part of a team
• Flexible and able to adapt quickly in a constantly evolving environment
• Excellent time management skills and ability to work to and meet deadlines
• A desire to learn and master new technologies and techniques and happy to regularly take on new challenges

Benefits

We offer a range of well-being initiatives, including private medical insurance, excellent parental leave, a working globally policy, mental health support, assistance programs, and social gatherings. We also provide a pension scheme and various other benefit schemes. Plus, we all get our birthdays off work and enjoy 25 days of holiday per year, as well as the opportunity to buy 5 additional days per year and you can be flexible about when you use your public holidays.

We've also got you covered with life assurance and exclusive perks like the Star card and our Step Further Awards (our employee recognition program) to recognise your dedication. For those working via the hybrid model (in the office and at home) we've made commuting easier with our Season Ticket Loan and Cycle to Work Scheme.

You can also take advantage of complimentary access to our Racing Post Members Club, complete with an Ultimate Membership. We believe in making a positive impact beyond the workplace, and you'll have the chance to volunteer two days per year with our charity partner, Autism in Racing.