Senior Back-End Engineer

Note: Apply before April 15

Do you want to help build GitHub for scientists? Do you want to be part of a new team in Amsterdam?

The project that we’re seeking talent for is with one the most disruptive groups to the standard business model of Elsevier: open science. The open-science movement means a more inclusive, collaborative and transparent world of research. At Elsevier, we’re enabling open science through our approach to open access, open data, research integrity, knowledge exchange, metrics and more – all to benefit research and society and drive research performance.

Our objective is to build the back-end platform for Mendeley Data.

We’re building an intelligent shareable data repository for scientific data and need more help. If you’re a passionate, focused and driven developer who isn’t afraid of making decisions quickly, building things you’ve not built before, untangling legacy code and hitting your sprint commitments, we want to hear from you. In return, we offer the opportunity to work on a meaningful product in a reactive AWS microservice architecture environment using Scala, Java 8, Dropwizard and Rx.

Your job

We’re looking for a senior back-end engineer to join the Mendeley Data team. We expect you to think on your feet and be able to come up with practical, simple solutions to complex problems. As well as having deep knowledge in areas related to back-end development, you should also be knowledgeable in all things related to creating a quality user-centered product. As a senior back-end Engineer, you will be part of shaping science’s next steps.

• You’ll work in Mendeley Data, a mixed discipline Agile scrum team of individuals centered around a common goal: to make sharing versioned research data easy, enjoyable and empowering
• You will be building a RESTful API to power our user-centered website which adheres to standards and is progressively enhanced to offer a rich experience
• Our back-end stack is delivered from a combination of microservices running JVM languages, including Scala and Java 8
• Working in two-week sprints with daily stand-ups, grooming, planning and retros, you’ll take your turn to run sprint demos for stakeholders
• Participate in once-a-month hackathons and brown-bag sessions
• You’ll occasionally work face to face with university and researcher customers on site
• You’ll be supported by a product manager, a business analyst and a tech lead

What we expect from you

• You have great team skills, including the confidence to put your idea across – even if the idea is initially unpopular – and the humility to admit when you are wrong
• Like everyone else on our team, you are versatile with a broad perspective, eager to learn new things and use the best tools for the job. You’re not afraid to venture into uncharted territory and come away with mastery of it
• Quality is important to you. You practice unit testing, integration testing, code reviews and constant communication to ensure the best outcome
• You have experience building services that are progressively enhanced over time
• A great deal of JVM experience
• Experience building solely RESTful applications and understand its nuances
• Event oriented experience using queues like SQS, JMS or Kafka
• Knowledge of Amazon Web Services
• Knowledge of Jenkins or similar build and continuous integration services
• You put user experience first when it comes to developing any user-facing product. Experience with user experience techniques such as user testing is highly desirable
• You care about performance, clean code, test-driven development, pair programming, experimentation, continuous delivery and continuous improvement
• Really happy in an Agile Scrum environment
• You are committed to the bigger picture of large software ecosystems; you are constantly thinking about the future when building new applications and features
• You are not afraid to challenge the status quo when necessary, and at the same time respect the opinions presented by your team

What you will get

We welcome you to a truly global, dynamic and challenging environment with great opportunities for personal development. Elsevier’s benefits are very competitive, and the summary below will give you an idea of what you can expect when joining Elsevier in the Netherlands.

• Competitive salary, including 13th month and a 10% bonus
• 27 days of holiday and public holidays
• Attractive collective healthcare insurance package with considerable reduction rates
• A solid pension plan, with a choice between a collective pension plan and an individual pension plan
• Flexible working arrangements
• Travel allowance for commuting
• Reductions to several personal insurance packages due to our collective agreements
• Numerous training, coaching and e-learning modules for long-term job opportunities and development
• Several local and global networking communities to share best practices and knowledge
• Various social responsibility programmes, channeling knowledge and strengths to help communities around the world improve education, science, healthcare and protect the environment

Our company/our team

At Elsevier, pride, passion and the pursuit of knowledge meet innovation, opportunity and growth. We are an organisation that runs on intelligence. We supply it, develop it and rely on it – and it requires intelligent people to make the intelligent career choice that will see us improve further. We are working to provide a platform that will enable world-changing research. The impact on society of what we do differentiates us from other tech companies in itself.