Software Engineer - Zero Carbon Living

Role OVO-View

Team: Zero Carbon Living
Salary banding: £75,000 - £90,000
Experience: Expert
Working pattern: Full-Time
Reporting to: Software Engineering Manager
Sponsorship: Unfortunately we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.
This role in 3 words: Impactful, exciting, challenging
Top 3 qualities for this role: Communication, Mastery, Collaboration

Where you’ll work: 

At OVO, we understand that a one size fits all approach doesn't work for everyone. That's why we created the OVO Way of Flexibility.

All our roles are hub based (Bristol, Glasgow or London), providing a dedicated space for collaboration, connection and teamwork. You'll also have the flexibility to work from home.

Everyone belongs at OVO

At OVO, we are on a mission to solve one of humanity's biggest challenges, the climate crisis. And we know it takes all of us to change the world. That's why we need diverse people from all abilities, gender identities, ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, life experiences and backgrounds to join us.

Team Working for the planet

Everything we do here spins around Plan Zero. So, naturally, the team you’ll be joining plays a gigantic role in making that happen. Here’s how:

In the Zero Carbon Living domain we are at the heart of Ovo’s mission to evolve our business into one that focuses on reducing every home's carbon footprint. We want to achieve Ovo’s decarbonisation goals through the collaborative delivery of innovative, high quality products that exceed customer expectations.

We’ve made good progress on the UK’s path to net zero. But we can do better. Research shows that 100% renewable energy tariffs aren't actually making the grid greener. We have to go further. We need to save energy, use power at smarter times of the day and look at other ways to help our customers reduce their carbon footprint.

Within ZCL we have a range of products, ranging from Drive, which is dedicated to all things electric vehicles. We then have Heat which focuses on our Smart Thermostats and Heat Pump sales journeys, as well as Solar and battery. 

We work like a start up - using our entrepreneurial, OVO Way spirit to drive us forward. And we’ll be flexible about how we do it - trying new things, growing the ones that work and learning new, green skills as we go. 

This role in a nutshell:

Working within one of our product workstream aligned squads, you will support the development and maintenance across one of the product workstreams. This includes launching new features and products,  optimising the system architecture for scale, solving the problems of the future.

Your key outcomes will be:

• Building, testing, improving and monitoring the development of new features (and sometimes new journeys) for the products in your workstream
• Always taking into consideration the security, maintainability and observability when designing solutions
• Working with a small team of Engineers, you will review code, resolve support issues, develop new functionality whilst enjoying pairing with team members and sharing knowledge
• Accountability for timely and reliable delivery of your work and contributing towards your team’s work and performance. Provide direction and hands-on technical guidance to your team, making sure key processes are understood, documented, and followed
• Shared ownership over system architecture, technical design and DevOps
• Guaranteeing system availability and performance
• Business alignment: Work with product and commercial team on developing team priorities based on the company’s business strategy
• Providing technical mentoring: Ensure your team follows engineering best practices, participate in architectural discussions, and prioritise infrastructural work if necessary
• …probably many more things we can’t even predict at this point

Within your first 3 months you’ll:

• Utilised 10% time to build knowledge and continue to grow as an engineer
• Be enjoying pairing with people within your team
• Have got to grips with our tooling
• Have got used to the ways of working within your team, collaborating with your team members to drive any efficiencies you and the team spot
• Learnt about the ZCL Domain and attended some of our domain sessions
• Have built up a good overall knowledge of the solutions that your teams own
• Have become a key member of the team

You’ll be a successful Software Engineer at OVO if you have…

• Experience leading a small team of engineers
• Are comfortable making decisions that will shape the future of our products
• Have experience in a fast pace growth environment
• Have strong Typescript knowledge for server-side development and a strong understanding of multi-server architectures, databases (especially PostgreSQL and Mongo) and DevOps (building CI/CD pipelines, Terraform/Kubernetes, AWS ECS etc)
• Are passionate about product and user experience – customers are at the heart of everything you do! Strong commercial thinking is a plus!
• You’ll have a strong desire to have impact and taking ownership early on
• An eye for designing solutions that are resilient and scalable
• Attention to detail and focus on security
• Familiarity with Test Driven development is beneficial

Let’s talk about what’s in it for you

We’ll pay you between £75,000 - £90,000, depending on your specific skills and experience.

We keep our pay ranges broad on purpose to give us, and you, flexibility to match your experience to our zero carbon mission.

You’ll be eligible for an on-target bonus of 15%. We have one OVO bonus plan that focuses on the collective performance of our people to deliver our Plan Zero goal. 

We also offer plenty of green benefits and progressive policies to help you feel like you belong at OVO…and there’s flex pay.  It’s an extra 9% of your salary on top of your core pay to use as you like. You can take it as cash, add to your pension, or choose to spend it on a huge range of flex benefits.

Here’s a taster of what’s on offer: 

For starters, you’ll get 34 days of holiday (including bank holidays).

For your health
With benefits like a healthcare cash plan or private medical insurance depending on your career level, critical illness cover, life assurance, health assessments, and more

For your wellbeing
With gym membership, gadget, travel and cyber insurance, workplace ISA, will writing services, DNA testing, dental insurance, and more

For your lifestyle
With extra holiday buying, discount dining, culture cards, tech loans, and supporting your favourite charities with give-as-you-earn donations

For your home 
Get up to £400 off any OVO Energy plan, plus personal carbon offsetting and great discounts on smart thermostats and EV chargers

For your commute
Nab a great deal on ultra-low emission car leasing, plus our cycle to work scheme and public transport season ticket loans

Want to hear about our full range of flexible benefits and progressive people policies? Our People Team can tell you everything you need to know.

For your Belonging

To find better ways to support our people, we need to listen to each other’s experiences and find ways to build a truly inclusive and diverse workplace. As part of this, we have 8 Belonging Networks at OVO. Led by our people, for our people - so when you join OVO, you can play a part - big or small - with any of the Networks. It's up to you.

Oh, and one last thing...

We’d be thrilled if you tick off all our boxes, yet we also believe it’s just as important we tick off all of yours. And if you think you have most of what we’re looking for but not every single thing, go ahead and hit apply. We’d still love to hear from you!

If you have any additional requirements, there’s a space to let us know on the application form; we want to make the process as easy and comfortable for you as possible..